ATCO Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the ADCO Limited third quarter 2023 results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. 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 and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Lawrence Grampson, Director of Corporate Finance. Please go ahead, Mr. Grampson.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased you could join us for ACCO's third quarter 2023 conference call. With me today is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Investment Officer, Katie Patrick. Before we move into our formal agenda, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the numerous traditional territories and homelands on which our global facilities are located. Today, we're speaking to you from our Aquapark head office in Calgary, which is located in the Treaty 7 region. This is the ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, comprised of Siksika, Kainai, and Pekanee Nations, the Tsitsina Nation, and the Stony Nakoda Nations that include the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Good Stony First Nations. The City of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3. We honour and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies and culture of the Indigenous peoples who call these areas home. Katie will begin today with some opening comments on recent company developments and our financial results. Following these prepared remarks, we will take questions from the investment community. Please note that a replay of the conference call A short supplementary presentation and a transcript will be available on our website at ATCO.com and can be found in the Investors section under the heading Events and Presentations. I'd like to remind you all that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please see the reports filed by ATCO with the Canadian securities regulators. And finally, I'd also like to point out that during this presentation we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, such as total of segment measures, adjusted earnings, adjusted earnings per share, and capital investment. These measures do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS, and as a result, they may not be comparable to similar measures presented in other entities. And now, I'll turn the call over to Katie for her opening remarks.

Thanks, Lawrence, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all very much for joining us today for our third quarter 2023 conference call. ATCO achieved adjusted earnings of $81 million, or 71 cents per share, in the third quarter of this year. Our non-utility investments delivered exceptional performance, helping to offset the earnings pressure associated with the rebasing of our Alberta distribution utilities and the normalizing inflation profile in Australia. ATCO structures and logistics delivered adjusted earnings of $28 million, $10 million higher than the same period last year. Building on the trend we've been speaking about for a number of quarters now, the key drivers of this earnings growth was the strong performance of our base businesses. Both our space rentals and workforce housing businesses delivered exceptional results in the period. Compared to the third quarter of 2022, we grew our space rentals fleet size by 9% and our average rental rate by 15%. Our workforce housing division has been successful in refining our fleet and tailoring it to the specific needs of our customers, allowing us to grow our average rental rate by 28% compared to the third quarter of 2022. Supporting the communities in which we operate is core to our values. During the quarter, we provided support to some of the communities impacted by this summer's wildfires. One of the projects saw us remobilize an existing workforce housing camp in Vailmont, D.C., to help support the evacuees displaced by the fires. As we look ahead to the fourth quarter of this year, we continue to expect our structures business to deliver year-over-year earnings growth, but with a moderation compared to what we have delivered in recent quarters this year. This softening is due to the typical seasonality the businesses experience in Canada in the later months of the year, and the completion of key projects, including the Bechtel Pluto Train 2 accommodations and our Trans Mountain Camps. On a full-year basis, the strong performance the business has locked in so far this year will allow structures and logistics to deliver significant year-over-year earnings growth. At now two main ports, the business delivered strong results, including adjusted earnings of $7 million in the quarter, $3 million higher than the same period last year. Favorable foreign exchange and increased ownership at Puerto Angamos and Terminal Granales del Norte pushed third quarter adjusted earnings higher when compared to 2022. Subsequent to quarter end, our joint venture with Nautilus, referred to as the Vancouver Bulk Terminal, announced an agreement with Solvay. This opportunity will see us work with Solvay, a global leader in the soda ash market, on a newly designed terminal that will have the capability to annually export more than 2.5 million tons of soda ash. Construction on this terminal is expected to begin in 2024, with completion in 2026. This is an exciting opportunity and reiterates our focus on growth and the deployment of capital in Nel Tumi. As expected, our Canadian utilities investment saw adjusted earnings decline by approximately $19 million when compared to the third quarter of last year. This decline was primarily due to the impact of rebasing at Alberta-based distribution utilities, as previously mentioned. This rebasing pressure was compounded by year-over-year earnings pressure in the Australian natural gas distribution business, as inflation levels have moderated in 2023 compared to the highs experienced in 2022. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, for our Canadian utilities investment, we expect many of the same things experienced through the first nine months of the year to continue. While I won't go into too much detail on this point, as Brian spoke about it earlier in CU's call, October saw CU receive two key regulatory decisions that helped provide regulatory certainty moving forward. They seized decisions on both the generic cost of capital, GCOC, and the third performance-based regulation, PBR framework. Our Canadian utilities investment provides ACCO a stream of stable and reliable earnings and cash flow, and these announcements reinforced the prospective and constructive nature of the regulatory system in Alberta as they enter 2024. Overall, Apto delivered a third quarter that was in line with our expectations and highlighted the strength of our diversified portfolio. Our non-CU investments delivered very strong results that helped soften the impact of rebasing and downward trending of Australian inflation. With this being a key transition year at our largest investment, CU, we continue to look for opportunities to outperform across our portfolio of investments. I look forward to sharing our full-year 2022 performance on our next call in early 2024. That concludes my prepared remarks, and I will now turn the call back to Lawrence.