RB Global, Inc.

Good morning, my name is Mike and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ritchie Brothers Auctioneers first quarter conference call. All lines have been placed on mute for any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Sameer Rathod, Vice President of Investor Relations and Marketing Intelligence, to open the conference call. Mr. Rathod, you may begin your conference.

Hello and good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss our first quarter 2021 results. Joining me today are Anne Fanduzzi, our Chief Executive Officer, and Sharon Visco, our Chief Financial Officer, along with other members of the management team who will be available for the Q&A portion of this call. The following discussion will include forward-looking statements. Comments that are not a statement of fact, including projections of future earnings, revenue, gross transaction value, and other items are considered forward-looking and involves risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual financial and operating results to differ significantly from our forward-looking statements are detailed in our SEC and Canadian securities filings. available on our investor relations website at investor.richiebrose.com. We encourage you to review our earnings release and Form 10-Q, which are available on our website, as well as Edgar and Cedar. On this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. For the identification of non-GAAP financial measures, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, and the reconciliation between the two, see our earnings release and Form 10-Q. Presentation slides accompany our commentary today. These slides can be viewed through the live or recorded webcast or downloaded from our website. All figures discussed today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated. I'll now turn the call over to Ann Fanderzi. Ann?

Thank you, Samir. And good morning to everyone joining our call today. I would like to start the call by thanking and congratulating all our team members. It has been a difficult 12 months, and our team continues to focus on the needs of our customers with an unwavering commitment to health and safety. We continue to see the environment as dynamic, and despite the continued uncertainty, our omnichannel platform continues to deliver strong outcomes for our customers and robust financial results for shareholders. GTV increased 11%, service revenue increased 13%, and adjusted operating income increased 31%. These numbers underscore the leverage in our model, and Sharon will walk you through the numbers shortly. Let me talk a little bit about how the quarter progressed. When you last heard from us in February, we indicated we were seeing uncertainty in the environment. Our published results for our Orlando auction clearly showed consignors were taking a wait-and-see approach. In response to constrained supply, conventional wisdom would have been to save costs and pull back on marketing. Instead, we doubled down on our commitment to drive the very best outcome for our customers and by increasing demand through higher levels of marketing spend. For our buyers, we continued to upgrade our digital experience And for our sellers, we continue to improve our digital marketing techniques and bundled regional events to bolster demand and drive used equipment pricing. Our actions led to Orlando and Houston seeing strong improvements in pricing of used equipment compared to last year. And we leveraged this strong pricing as a rallying cry for our sales organization to help consignors gain confidence. We are very happy with the first quarter. However, I want to note that year-over-year comparisons will become less meaningful as we get later into this year as COVID heavily distorted our typical seasonality in 2020. We continue to have an intense focus on the customer and fiercely drive all components within our control. So we are able to cope with external headwinds and manage the volatility while benefiting when the environment changes Overall, the environment continues to be uneven, with pockets of strength like residential offset by pockets of weakness like non-residential construction, and conditions are also varying significantly around the globe. This dynamic is causing lumpiness of supply, and the second quarter is off to a slower start. Some consignors are busy. Others are waiting to see what happens as they digest continuously changing macro developments. timing, size, and scope of infrastructure stimulus, tax changes, vaccine distributions. We know there have been issues with equipment production given the supply chain as well, while COVID rages on in certain parts of the world. The customer remains the core to everything we do, and we are executing in areas that are in our control. Our digital marketing team continues to deliver demand for our global buyer base. with a 42% increase in bids per lot sold. We believe this demand generation is helping to drive increases of used equipment pricing. We also continue to drive strong operating leverage in the quarter with our COVID protocols very much in place. Last quarter, we talked about how we changed our organization to drive growth and execution at a global scale. And this quarter, we continue to follow through on that commitment I am pleased to announce that Sam Lyons has accepted the position of International Strategic Accounts Leadership to help bring the best practices he led in North America to our international markets. After Sharon discusses our financials, I will talk about how we are executing against our strategic pillars, and then we will do a Q&A. And now, over to Sharon.