CI Financial Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CI Financial 2020 Fourth Quarter Results webcast. All lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star 2. Please take note of the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measures on the second page of the presentation. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Kurt McAlpine, CEO of CI Financial. Mr. McAlpine, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CI Financial's fourth quarter earnings call. Joining me on today's call is our CFO, Doug Jamieson. During the call, we will discuss the highlights and challenges of the fourth quarter, review our financial performance, provide an update on our sales to date for the first quarter, discuss the execution of select items of our corporate strategy, then we will take your questions. We had a strong quarter to cap off a transformational year for CI. Adjusted EPS of 71 cents in Q4 and $2.45 for the full year both represent record levels. We began to see material contributions from our wealth management expansion, which helped drive strong sequential growth in cash flow and adjusted EBITDA. We expect an even greater contribution in 2021 as many of the acquisitions we made closed at the end of the quarter. We continue to take a dynamic approach to capital allocations. During the quarter, we spent $30 million to repurchase 1.8 million shares. The slowdown compared to prior periods reflects the success of our wealth management expansion strategy and the six deals that closed in the quarter. Following our listing on the New York Stock Exchange in November, we tapped the U.S. credit markets for the first time in December to raise U.S. dollars 700 million in 10-year bonds at a coupon of 3.2%. While we didn't initially plan to raise that level of capital, significant demand driven by a belief in our strategy and outlook allowed us to globalize and diversify our credit investor base, lock in attractive long-term financing, and utilize a significant portion of the proceeds to retire our 2021 and 2023 bonds, improving our maturity profile with no change to net leverage. The board also declared an 18-cent dividend, which is consistent with prior quarters. On the sales front, although the company continues to be in redemptions, we generated solid gross sales results, which increased 13% sequentially and 10% from a year ago. Our institutional business struggled, driven almost exclusively by banks and insurance companies continuing to insource mandates to their in-house teams, although the level of at-risk assets continues to shrink pointing to improved results in 2021. Importantly, our announcement last quarter that we centralized our investment functions and moved away from our historical multi-boutique model has not negatively impacted our gross or net sales. Client feedback has generally been positive, and longer term, we continue to expect the restructuring will drive better investment performance and a better client experience. These changes combined with the enhancements we've made to sales marketing and product management should translate into improved net sales. Strategic momentum continued in the fourth quarter. We further scaled our wealth management platforms, closing on the acquisitions of five U.S. RIAs, as well as Canada-based wealth management firm Align Capital. In 2020, we had the fastest-growing RIA platform in the U.S. and the fastest-growing wealth platform in Canada. In January, we announced the acquisition of Siegel, Bryan, and Hamill with U.S. $23 billion of REA and institutional assets, bringing attractive new capabilities to the firm. Finally, the quality of our integrated and rebranded Canadian investment management business, CI Global Asset Management, received a number of awards from Liquor and FundGrade.

I will now turn the call over to Doug to review the financial results for the quarter. Thank you, Kurt.