CAE Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the CAE second quarter conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Andrew Arnovitz. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's remarks, including management's outlook and answers to questions, contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations as of today, November 10, 2022, 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 the annual MD&A available on our corporate website and in our filings with the Canadian Securities Administrators on CDAR, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on EDGAR. On the call with me this afternoon are Marc Caron, C's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sonia Branco, our Chief Financial Officer. After remarks from Marc and Sonia, we'll open the call for questions for financial analysts, and at the conclusion of that segment, we'll open the lines to members of the media. Let me now turn the call over to Marc.

Thanks, Andrew. And good afternoon to everyone joining us on the call. We had strong performance in the second quarter, led by double-digit growth in civil and sequentially better results in defense. We also delivered another quarter of double-digit revenue growth in healthcare with higher profitability. We continued to secure C's future with nearly $1.3 billion in total orders for a record $10.6 billion of adjusted backlog and 1.3 times book-to-sales ratio. In civil, we made excellent progress converting our large opportunities pipeline into $751 million of orders, resulting in a 1.48 times book-to-sales ratio. This is especially impressive considering that revenue is 40% higher than last year. Orders include long-term training agreements with airlines and business aircraft operators, including a new 15-year pilot training and operations agreement with Qantas, one of the world's most renowned airlines, and like CAE, a name synonymous with safety. We also secured training agreements with Virgin Australia, JetSmart Airlines, DHL Air UK, and American Airlines. Demand for full-flight simulators was robust, with 18 sales in the quarters. we sold another five full-flight, and actually bringing our total year-to-date tally to 29. Since the end of the quarter, we sold another five full-flight simulators for a total of 34 sales since the start of the fiscal year. Civil's financial and operational performance was also strong in the second quarter with double-digit growth across all metrics. We delivered 10 full-flight simulators in a quarter and averaged training center utilization with 66% up from 53% last year. This reflects the air traffic recovery in select regions and a measure of summer seasonality. Commercial aviation training demand in the Americas continued to be very strong, while Europe was seasonably lower on a sequential basis. In Asia, the reopening of Japan has been a positive catalyst, but the region overall remained well below pre-pandemic levels, due to the ongoing travel restrictions in China. In business aviation, training demands continue to be robust throughout our network, reflecting a high level of pilot training to support business aircraft flight activity, which has shown signs of stabilization at approximately 20% above pre-pandemic levels. In defense, as we've been saying for some time, The earliest signs of our progress towards a larger and more profitable business is order intake. And testament to that, this past quarter marks another step in the right direction. We booked orders for training and mission support solutions valued at $500 billion for a 1.13 times book to sales, which marks the fifth consecutive quarter that this ratio has been above one and situates us with a book to sales ratio of 1.33 times on a trailing 12-month basis. We're now sustaining higher order intake, replenishing our backlog with new and more profitable defense contracts. Defense quarters this quarter reflect our capabilities across all five battle space domains. In the air domain, we signed a contract with Piaggio Airspace for the P180 Avanti full-flight simulator for the Italian Air Force. and we expanded our relationship with Lockheed Martin for system trainers and modifications evolving C-130 platforms. A key tenet of our strategy is to develop strategic relationships with platform OEMs, and these agreements, in addition to our recently announced MOU with Boeing for global collaboration, are notable signs of progress. In the land domain, we expanded our capabilities with a prototype development award under the U.S. Army Soldier Virtual Trainer Contract. A component of the synthetic training environment, the Soldier Virtual Trainer Contract, or SVT, continues the expansion of synthetic training environments with a platform to empower soldier-led training. Defense also won a contract in the sea domain with the Platforms and Systems Training Contract to support the Royal Australian Navy And this program is strategically significant in the context of Australia's defense modernization priorities in light of geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific region. Under a five-year agreement, we'll be supporting the future training transformation of Royal Air Navy mariners across four sea platforms, on-site and port NSC. We're leveraging our experience training mariners worldwide including the U.S. Navy on multiple naval aircraft platforms, bridge training for the littoral combat ship, and the U.S. Army Maritime Integrated Training System. In the space and cyber domains, we received additional awards from our key space and missile defense customer, along with cyber technology updates on our core platforms and systems from various customers within the U.S. Department of Defense. Our unique combination of experiences Digital technology and subject matter expertise also provided new opportunities this quarter with strategic customers for prototype development. They included authorization from the Air Force Research Lab to develop and demonstrate innovative, mission-effective unmanned air vehicle capability to assist with unmanned teaming, along with an aviation mission planning prototype for a sensitive customer. Both are U.S. national defense priorities and leverage capabilities across CA's business units. Our financial performance for defense in the quarter improved sequentially, consistent with our expectations. This performance is a result of our heightened operational focus in the face of the challenges that we highlighted last quarter, namely the prevailing supply chain and labor headwinds and order delays, all of which are pervasive across the defense sector and broader economy. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Sonia, who will provide additional details about our financial performance. Sonia?