VIQ Solutions Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mel, and I will be your conference operator today. We are hosting a conference call to discuss the third quarter 2021 financial result for VIQ Solutions Incorporated. 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 start and zero on your touchtone phone. We 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 reenter the queue. Your host for today is Ms. Laura Kiernan, head of investor relations for VIQ. Ma'am, please go ahead.

Thank you, Mel, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to VIQ Solutions' third 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 continuous disclosure filings, which are available on CDAR at cdar.com and on sec.gov. As a reminder, all dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. With us today, we have Sebastian Paré, CEO, Alexi Edwards, the CFO, and Susan Sumner, President and COO of VIQ, all of whom will be available for questions following these prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to Sebastian Paré to begin.

Thank you, Laura. Welcome, everyone, to our third quarter 2021 earnings call. Just three and a half weeks ago, we provided an interim update for you on the third quarter, following some exciting news related to our M&A activity. We announced that we had acquired 100% of the issue and outstanding shares of the transcription agency for approximately $1.7 million. TTA is a leading supplier of secure outsourced transcription services to clients in private and public sectors throughout the United Kingdom. The acquisition provides VIQ with important government contracts and a team with decades of operating experience in the UK. This acquisition positions us to provide localized end-to-end offerings to government agencies with immediate cross-selling and growth opportunity. It also adds significant audio and video volumes to our localized AI assist engines, driving the accuracy of first draft. and provide synergies with our existing Capture Pro technology business in the region. We are so delighted to add their talented staff as an integral part of our next phase of our growth. The combined organization will benefit from the outstanding reputation of each company as we accelerate the adoption of our AI-powered digital workflow into the judicial criminal justice and government markets. In October, we also announced the definitive purchase agreement to acquire the assets of Oscrip Australia, known as Oscrip, a leading supplier of secure recording and transcription services for courts and law firms throughout Australia for a total purchase price of approximately $7.6 million. Due to the confidentiality agreement in place with the seller of Oscrip, we can only disclose very limited information about the acquisition until after it closes. The proposed OSCRB acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021, subject to the satisfaction of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The process is moving along as expected. Both acquisitions are very strategic and they are a very important next step in our clearly defined growth plan that includes M&A and an investment in organic growth and scalability to meet the rapidly changing client needs towards a much higher level of digitization and new ways to consume and deliver the documentation. Now that we've executed the majority of our major corporate initiative this year to fortify our strong foundation, we are firmly positioned to accelerate disruption. Our focus is on execution of our growth plan by investing in and enabling organic growth and accelerating the M&A transactions in the pipeline. while our underlying technology-enabled productivity gains continues to get more and more accurate. Even though we were still dealing with challenges associated with COVID-19 in Q3, which included labour shortages in the US, as well as the return to full productivity in Australia, these are mostly in the mirror view now, and we're extremely excited with our plan to exit 2021 and look forward to carrying the strong momentum into 2022. Our cloud and AI documentation service platform is now operational in each of our operating region globally. Productivity gains are increasingly flowing to our margins. Gross margins in our U.S. editing services have now crossed a record high threshold, and yet we're at the early stage. we're seeing real productivity gains following the transition to machine versus human first draft using NextScribe Powered by AI Assist for our organic clients as well as the acquired client base. We now have the global foundation to look beyond 2022 and to the next generation of disruption in the markets we serve. The capital we raised was earmarked to complete our targeted acquisition and to accelerate our technology innovations. We are making great progress in both areas. Our core focus remains on change, and that is to deliver documentation in a new way to improve the way that audio and video evidence is captured, digitized, and consumed. Now I will hand it over to Alexi to provide a high-level overview of our financial results. He will be followed by Susan, who will provide some insight into our operations. Then we'll take some of your questions. Alexi? Thank you, Sebastian.