CI Financial Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CI Financial 2021 First 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, simply press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, followed by 2. Please take note of the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measures on the second page of the presentation. 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 first quarter earnings call. Joining me on today's call is our CFO, Doug Jamieson. During the call, we will cover the following topics. A discussion of the highlights and challenges of the quarter. a review of our financial performance during the quarter, an update on our sales to date for the second quarter, an update on the execution of select items of our corporate strategy, then we will take your questions. Following a transformational year in 2020, we had a record quarter to start 2021. Doug will cover in more detail in a moment, but I'd note we've made changes to our adjusted metrics to remove the noise associated with our M&A providing better visibility into the trends and economics of our business. We've started to see material contributions from our wealth management expansion, which helped drive record-adjusted EPS of 73 cents, record-adjusted free cash flow per share of 75 cents, record-adjusted EBITDA per share of $1.14 on record-adjusted revenues of $603 million. We expect an even larger contribution from our wealth management business as 2021 progresses and the recently closed SBH, Barrett, and Brightworth acquisitions and the recently announced Dowling and Yankee acquisition begin to contribute. We continue to take a dynamic approach to capital allocation. During the quarter, we spent $113 million to repurchase 6.6 million shares. The acceleration compared to recent quarters reflects our view of the stock's absolute and relative valuation and a brief lull in deal closings between the six deals that closed in Q4 and the four that closed in April. We also reduced leverage while further improving our maturity profile. Using the proceeds from our December notes offering and the reopening in January, we fully retired our 2021 and 2023 notes and repurchased $44 million of our 2024 bonds. The Board also declared an 18-cent dividend consistent with prior quarters. On the sales front, although the company continues to be in redemptions, we generated our best net sales quarter since 2017, reflecting the tangible evidence our strategic initiatives are paying off. As anticipated, outflows from our institutional business declined, and the level of at-risk assets continues to shrink. One example being our ETF platform, where on the back of innovative product launches, CI was the industry leader in creations in March for the first time in our history. Our strategic momentum accelerated in the first quarter. During the quarter, we announced the acquisitions of Siegel Bryant & Hamill, Barrett Asset Management, and Brightworth, which combined added nearly $40 billion of client assets when those deals closed at the end of April. We continue to modernize our asset management business with the launch of innovative thematic products, such as our Bitcoin and Ethereum funds, which immediately saw a market uptake and have established themselves as category leaders. Now Doug will review the financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Kurt.