VIQ Solutions Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Julie Anne and I'll be your conference operator. Today we are hosting a conference call to discuss the first quarter 2023 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 touch tone 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. Your host for today is Ms. Laura Kiernan, Head of Investor Relations for VIQ. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Julianne. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 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 continuous disclosure filings, which are available on CDAR 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, CFO, and Susan Sumner, President and COO of CIQ, all of whom will be available for questions following the prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to Sebastian Paré to begin.

Thank you, Laura. Welcome, everyone, to our first quarter. I'll provide some high-level remarks on our results, then I'll hand it over to Susan, who will discuss some of our operating results. which will be followed by Alexi, who will discuss some of our financial results. Then we'll open up for questions. The increasing demand for digital content by global organizations requires the implementation of innovative, specialized technology to process data more swiftly and in a secure and precise manner. Transcribers play a critical role in leveraging artificial intelligence to achieve greater productivity and accuracy rates to meet inventory standards. During the quarter with the seasonality factor due to the year-end holiday recess in our court segments, we remain focused and committed to delivering a strong and consistent value to our customers and partners. As a continuation of our record level of net new bookings last year, we are encouraged by our strong Q1 bookings that represent an increase of 69% when compared to the same period in 2022. Net new bookings are an early indication of organic growth. Contracts take some time to ramp and revenue to be recognized. As of March 31st, our total contracted net new bookings were $9.4 million, of which 20% has been recognized as revenue so far. The remaining 80% will be recognized over time. Increasingly, New customers have recognized the value of the IQ offering. After a detailed procurement evaluation, these new clients, including Fortune 500 organizations, have told us that our velocity offering is unique in its end-to-end approach. Utilizing innovative technology to speed up the capture of high-end quality audio and video, industry-specialized workflow, cybersecurity protocols, and engine agnostic AI that includes machine learnings ensure the accurate, actionable information is created in an expedited manner. We will continue to expand our solution suite, focusing on SaaS solutions to simplify content acquisition and accelerate documentation creation. Our intellectual property is changing the industry and is the catalyst to organic growth in 2023 and 2024. We're pleased to have completed the migration of the Queensland contract. Despite the short-term revenue impacts, it is a crucial step in providing us with revenue predictability as we continue to scale. We believe this contract, combined with the effects of foreign currency exchange, will have normalized quarter-over-quarter revenue, showing growth in Australia. Susan will speak more about the whole DJAC factor in the makeup of Q1 to make sure everyone understands this new contract. During the quarter, we also completed the refinancing of our debt with BD Capital. BD's approach, striking a measure balance between innovations, advancement in REI, and competitive leadership, SAS scalability and growth, versus costs and a return to positive EBITDA, became very important at this stage of our growth. BD's depth in technology and transition to SAS knowledge is exceptional. with incredible depth in financials and market analysis. Our partnership with BD at this stage of our growth is crucial. Finally, we implemented significant cost containment measures, which enable us to significantly reduce our overall operating cost. Alexi will provide you with more details on that topic. I will now pass the call over to Susan to discuss our operating results in greater details. Susan?