CAE Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the CAE fourth quarter and full year financial results for fiscal year 2024 conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions, followed by a Q&A for members of the media. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrew Arnovitz. Please go ahead, Mr. Arnovitz.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's remarks, including management's outlook for fiscal 25, and answers to questions contained forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations as of today, May 28, 2024, 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 CA's annual MD&A, available on our corporate website and on our filings with the Canadian Securities Administrators on CDAR Plus and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on EDGAR. With the divestiture of C's healthcare business, all comparative figures discussed here and in our financial results have been reclassified to reflect discontinued operations. On the call with me this morning are Marc Perron, C's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sonia Branco, our Chief Financial Officer. Nick Leontidis, CA's newly appointed Chief Operating Officer, is also on hand for the question period. After remarks from Mark and Sonia, we'll open the call to questions from financial analysts, and at the conclusion of that segment, we'll open the lines to members of the media. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Andrew, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call. As you'll have seen from our earnings release, Fourth quarter results are unchanged from last week's pre-announcement, which was mainly intended to communicate the rebase finding of our defense business and the appointment of Nikki Otidis, a proven CA veteran, as our chief operating officer. To provide additional context, last week we also offered an earnings preview in our preliminary fiscal 2025 outlook. This morning, Sonia and I will provide a bit more color on our performance and our very strong financial position. Last week, we took decisive action to establish a clear path for margin improvement in our defense business. I certainly recognize that our defense performance has significantly fallen short of our expectations and understand and share investors' frustrations. The impairments and accelerated risk recognition on the legacy contracts that we announced last week are disappointing but necessary steps towards putting the overhang of these past issues behind us. These actions were made possible by renegotiating agreements with our customers and our suppliers, adjusting the scope and the timing of these contracts for our mutual benefit. Ultimately, this enables us to address the programmatic risks that have been affecting our business. Alongside the baseline of the defense business was the acceleration of risk recognition on legacy contracts and execution of a leadership or reorganization and implementation of targeted operational enhancement at both the segment and corporate levels. These initiatives are designed to fortify our execution capabilities and foster greater synergies between our defense and our civil businesses. I fully expect these changes to enable greater focus through the simplification of our operating structure with our COO, overseeing the five P&Ls that encompass CEA's entire business scope. This new structure and recent upskilling of talent in defense will further enhance the execution and oversight of major defense programs and facilitate the exploration and realization of synergies between our civil and defense operations. Also, and in the vein of further bolstering CEA's future, Our fourth quarter and full year results reflect continued strong growth in our core markets, robust order flow, and consistent cash generation. For CA overall, we grew adjusted backlog by approximately 13% year-over-year with $1.6 billion in orders in a quarter, or a 1.38 book-to-sales ratio. And for the year, we booked over $4.9 billion in orders, for a 1.15 times book-to-sales ratio. As of the end of March, we had a record backlog of $12.2 billion. We also further strengthened our financial position, having generated $418 million of free cash flow during the fiscal year, and together with proceeds from the sale of health care, we reduced leverage below three times net debt to adjusted EBITDA, excluding legacy contracts. In civil, we booked orders in a fourth quarter fiscal quarter for $832 million, including contracts for seven full-flight simulators. This brings the total civil order intake to a record $3 billion for the year, including 64 full-flight simulator sales, demonstrating the sustained high demand for pilot training solutions and our flight solutions software platform. Civil concluded the year with a record-adjusted backlog of $6.4 billion. Notable contracts in the quarter included a multi-year commercial aviation training agreement with ITA Airways and a first-of-its-kind partnership in Canada, where CA instructors will deliver initial training for NAV Canada flight service specialists and air traffic controllers. And testament to our progress in flight solutions, we announced yesterday the signing of European ultra-low-cost carrier Wizz Air as a new partner under a multi-year supply agreement. We'll be supplying Wizz Air with CA's operational control and crew management software and CA's recovery manager solutions for operational and crew destructions. Average trading center utilization was strong at 78% for the fourth quarter and 76% for the year, up from 72% the year prior. In products, we deliver 17 civil full-flight simulators a quarter and 47 for the year, compared to 46 deliveries in the prior year. As disclosed last week, this is a bit lower than the approximately 50 that we had expected, with timing difference due to customer requests to postpone deliveries because their own facilities weren't ready to receive the full-flight simulators as originally planned. Taking time delays from last year into account, We expect to deliver more than 50 offline simulators in fiscal 2025. Turning to defense, at the same time as we've been taking actions to re-baseline the business, we've continued to make headway with our transformation strategy. We reached $1.9 billion of adjusted order intake on an annual basis, involving training and simulation solutions for 1.04 times book-to-sales ratios. This contributed to a $5.7 billion of adjusted defense backlog. In the quarter, we had orders totaling $718 million, including a transformative win involving a contract with General Atomics to support the remotely piloted aircraft system or RPAS program for delivering air crew and maintenance technician training and supporting training devices and courseware to meet Canada's RPAS requirements. This, to me, is a prime example of a kind of larger and more differentiated program that we're in a position to address that will ultimately drive the defense transformation that we've been expecting. 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?