ATCO Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the ATCO Limited fourth 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. Colin Jackson, Senior Vice President, Finance, Treasury and Sustainability. Please go ahead, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased you could join us for ACCO's fourth quarter 2023 conference call. With me today is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Investment Officer Katie Patrick, and the president of aqua structures adam beattie 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 aqua park head office in calgary which is located in the treaty 7 region this is the ancestral territory of the blackfoot confederacy comprised of the siksika Kainai and Pagani Nations, the Tsitsinu Nation, and the Stony Dakota Nations that include the Chikniki, Bearspaw, and Good Stony First Nations. The City of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3. We honor and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies, and culture of the Indigenous peoples who call these areas home. The call today will begin with some opening comments from Katie on recent company developments and financial results, followed by an update from Adam on our global structures business. After these prepared remarks, we will take questions from the investment community. Please note that a replay of the conference call, a short supplemental 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 or 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 Colin and good morning everyone. Thank you all very much for joining us today for our fourth quarter 2023 conference call. Before we move into more detailed discussion on our results, I wanted to touch on a few significant achievements we had this year. In 2023, our business delivered adjusted earnings growth of approximately 2%. This highlights the strength of our diversified portfolio as we more than offset the impact of rebasing and the Australian inflation in our largest investment, Canadian Utilities. Structures had an absolutely incredible year. They impeccably executed on the strategy we have reinforced consistently to aggressively grow the base repeatable business. Prontech continued to backfill the project pipeline and as always were exemplars of our corporate values through their operation of two fire relief accommodation villages in DC and Alberta during the challenging 2023 wildfire season. And Natumi Ports increased ownership in a number of existing ports and entered into a JV with Nautilus known as the Vancouver Bulk Terminal. These are truly exceptional achievements and testament to the operational and management expertise that we have across our portfolio. Moving to our overall financial performance, ATCO achieved adjusted earnings of $432 million, or $3.82 per share for 2023. As I alluded to earlier, the diversity of our portfolio really showed its worth this year, with our non-utility investments more than offsetting the earnings pressure experience at our Canadian utilities investments. I won't go into too much detail on Canadian utilities as the team just spoke about these points on this morning's call, but I do want to reiterate that we entered into the year knowing that rebasing would create significant cyclicality for CU in 2023. So while the business did see earnings reset downward from 20 to 22 levels, CU delivered great performance and was well in line with our expectations for the year. Looking ahead to 2024, the Alberta distribution utilities within our CU investment moved into their third PBR performance-based regulation cycle. Consistent with the strategy utilized in the business's first two PBR cycles, the focus is on unlocking efficiencies that drive both premium returns and long-term customer savings. 2024 will also be supported by the recent generic cost of capital decision that increased our approved ROE to 9.28% versus the previous rate of 8.5% for all of the Alberta-based utilities within the portfolios. CU continues to provide ATCO a stream of stable and reliable earnings and cash flows, and these regulatory decisions reaffirm our view of the prospective and constructive nature of the regulatory system in Alberta. Moving to our other investments, ATCO's structures had an unprecedented year. Structures delivered adjusted earnings of $89 million in 2023, $35 million higher than 2022. This growth was driven by a number of items including the continued expansion of our base business, the successful integration of Triple M Housing, further optimization of our fleet, and the successful execution of a number of key projects. To speak to some of these successes and provide an update on the Structures business, I'll turn the call over to Adam.