CAE Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the CAE fourth quarter conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Andrew Arnovitz. You may now proceed, Mr. Arnovitz.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's remarks, including management's outlook for fiscal 21 and answers to questions contained forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations as of today, May 22nd, 2020, and accordingly are subject to change. Such statements are based on assumptions that may not materialize and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially, and listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. A description of the risks, factors, and assumptions that may affect future results is contained in CAE's annual MD&A, available on our corporate website, and in our filings with the Canadian Securities Administrator on CEDAR, and with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on EDGAR. On the call with me this afternoon are Marc Farrance, he's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sonia Branco, our Chief Financial Officer. After remarks from Marc and Sonia, we'll take questions from financial analysts and institutional investors. Following the conclusion of that Q&A period, we'll open the call to questions from members of the media. Let me now turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon to everyone joining us on the call. I'll first discuss some highlights of the quarter and the year, and then Sonia will review the detailed financials and outline some of the measures that we've put in place to protect our financial position and preserve liquidity in the face of the pandemic. I'll come back at the end of the presentation to comment on our outlooks. We were leading CAE to what would have been another record year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and unfortunately, it impacted us during what is normally our strongest quarter. More importantly is the risk this suddenly posed to people's well-being, and our first response was naturally to ensure the health and safety of our employees and our customers, and this continues to be our top priority. We wasted no time assembling a COVID-19 pandemic task force and putting our business continuity plans in place. I'm extremely proud of CEE's employees worldwide who daily, through even the most extreme conditions, take to heart the continuity of our customers' most critical operations and earn the privilege of being their training partner of choice. What makes me even more proud is the way our employees went beyond the call of duty in the fight against COVID-19. by bringing forward the idea to develop a critical care ventilator. It took just 11 days for 12 CA engineers and scientists to develop a prototype. And now some more than 500 CA employees are delivering on a contract with the Government of Canada to manufacture 10,000 ventilators to help save lives. The CA Air One Ventilator, as we've called it, is in the final stages of certification by the health authorities. We're in the business of safety, after all, and this humanitarian gesture is a true testament to the kind of social impact that CAE and its employees have. It also underscores the company's agility in our culture of innovation. Now, turning to our results. Notwithstanding COVID-19 impacting us during our biggest quarter, we still had a strong performance overall in fiscal 20 with double-digit revenue growth, 21% operating income growth, and 7% higher earnings per share. I'm especially pleased with our 98% conversion of net income to free cash flow, which underscores the cash generative profile of CE's world-leading training solutions. In Civil, we exceeded our annual outlook with 37% operating income and annual orders totaling $2.5 billion, including additional airline training outsourcing and 49 full-flight simulator sales. Civil finished the year with a record backlog of $5.3 billion. Again this year, we delivered more than 1 million hours of training, underscoring CAE's position as the largest civil aviation training company in the world. In the fourth quarter specifically, Civil voted orders for $469 million, including the sale of 12 full-flight simulators. Civil saw a significant decrease in training services demands as a result of the reduction in airline and business aircraft operations globally and the disruption to the global air transportation environment itself. In addition to much lower demand, travel restrictions and local self-isolation measures worldwide resulted in several civil aviation training location closures. By the end of the March quarter, 19 of our over 60 training locations had suspended operations, and a further 10 locations began operating at significantly reduced capacity. In addition to disruptions to our global training network, we also had to suspend the installation and delivery of civil simulator products, and under local public directives, our Montreal manufacturing plant suspended manufacturing of civil simulators during the last week of March. Despite these disruptions, we still managed to deliver an otherwise impressive 56 civil full-flight simulators for the year. In defense, We expected a strong fourth quarter in order to reach our annual outlook for modest growth. But it, too, was impacted by the pandemic. We achieved modest revenue growth, but we came up short on operating income, which was down 13%, mainly on lower-than-expected progress on program milestones and delays securing new orders. A range of programs with defense and OEM customers globally saw project advancement delays due to travel bans, client access restrictions, and supply chain restrictions and disruptions. Also, we had delays to contract awards as government acquisition authorities followed directives in their respective countries to shelter in place and eliminate travel. In the Middle East, the new realities brought about by the pandemic and low oil price has led work on certain programs to be halted and new contract awards to move to the right, with customers focused on their new fiscal realities and mitigating the pandemic itself. Despite these headwinds, we still booked $1.2 billion of orders during the year for a $4.1 billion defense backlog which gives CA an additional measure of diversification. Key wins included a contract for KC-135 air crew training services and simulator upgrades for the United States Air Force and a contract to provide the German Navy with a comprehensive training solution for the NH-90 sea lion helicopter and to upgrade and modify the German Army's NH-90 full mission simulators. For the quarter, we received defense orders and contract options totaling $277 million. Notable wins included a contract with Leonardo to provide M-346 training devices and upgrades, an order from VAE Systems to supply our CA Medallion E-Series visual system, and an order from Babcock France to provide a Pilatus PC-21 full mission simulator for the French Air Force. And finally, in healthcare, We were tracking expectations for double-digit annual revenue growth when it, too, was negatively affected by COVID-19 as medical and nursing school customers came under lockdown protocols and hospital customers focused attention on the healthcare crisis. CA Healthcare did, however, succeed to bolster its position during the year as the innovation leader in simulation-based healthcare education and training. It won the EMS World Innovation Award for CA ARIS AR, the Microsoft HoloLens application for healthcare's emergency care mannequin. Healthcare also launched innovative products, including new anesthesia SIM stat modules, screen-based simulation approved by the American Board of Anesthesiologists for maintenance of certification credits, and multiple custom simulators for OEMs and leading medical device companies, including Bayliss Medical and Edwards Life Sciences. And on the humanitarian front, in addition to our ventilator initiative, our healthcare provided complementary training seminars on how to prepare healthcare workers in a fight against COVID-19. We also launched simulation-based training solutions to train personnel in the safe practice of ventilation and intubation, which is key to saving lives. Additionally, We leveraged our global supply chain to supply some 600,095 masks to the Quebec and Manitoba governments in support of frontline health workers. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sonia, who will provide a detailed look at our financial performance. I'll return at the end of the call to comment on our outlook. Sonia?