ATCO Ltd.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2024 results conference call and webcast for ATCO Limited. 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, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Colin Jackson, Senior Vice President, Financial Operations. Please go ahead, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased you could join us for ACCO's fourth quarter 2024 conference call. On the line today, we have Katie Patrick, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial and Investment Officer, and Adam Beattie, President of ACCO Structures. Before we move into today's remarks, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the numerous traditional territories and homelands on which our global facilities are located. Today, I am 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, the Kainai, and the Pekani nations. and the Stony Dakota Nations, which include the Chiniki, Bears Paw, and Good Stony First Nations. I also want to recognize that the City of Calgary is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Districts 5 and 6. We honor and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies, and culture of the Indigenous peoples who call these areas home. Today, we'll hear from Katie, who will deliver opening comments on our financial results and recent company developments, followed by an update from Adam on ATCO structures. Following today's remarks, the ATCO team will take questions from the investment community. Please note that a replay of the conference call, a copy of the presentation, and today's transcript will be available on our website at ATCO.com following the call. The materials can be found in the Investor section under Events and Presentations. Today's remarks will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings of the Canadian Securities Regulators. During today's presentation, we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, including adjusted earnings, adjusted EBITDA, 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 by 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 for joining us today. Reflecting on the past year, our strong performance in 2024 highlights our continued focus on our strategic growth objectives. I'm pleased to report that ASCO achieved adjusted earnings of $481 million. This is $49 million and over 11% higher than the previous year. This $49 million of growth demonstrates the strength of our strategy to invest in resilient assets within the essential services space with all of our segments delivering year-over-year growth and adjusted earnings compared to 2023. At Canadian Utilities, growth in 2024 was driven by a few factors, including rate-based growth across our utilities, the increase in allowable ROE from 8.5% in 2023 to 9.28% in 2024, and the benefit of the efficiency carryover mechanism. As discussed on this morning's CU call, we will have a reset to Alberta Utilities' allowable ROE from 9.28% to 8.97% for 2025. Additionally, the efficiency carryover mechanism we rewarded in 2023 and 2024 for achieving efficiencies during PBR2 comes to an end. With these two factors, while these two factors will contribute to more moderated growth in 2025, we anticipate continued rate-based growth and cost savings to partially offset this. Over the long term, we continue to be bullish on the outlook of our energy businesses. As population and industrial needs continue to grow, we expect to see very strong fundamentals in our core Alberta markets and opportunities to deliver even higher rate-based growth. Moving to structures and logistics, adjusted earnings in 2024 were $14 million higher compared to the prior year. Aquastructures delivered growth throughout 2024, which was tied to their strong base business performance driven by increased global space rental activity. in addition to improved workforce housing trade sale performance across Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Natume ports continue to deliver consistent results as adjusted earnings were $2 million higher compared to the prior year. Natume remains focused on growth and the deployment of capital, all while being a stable source of dividends for ATCO. Moving to a very important cash generation, when looking at our standalone ATCO businesses, which exclude Canadian utilities, cash flow from operating activities was $280 million in 2024, up over 50% from the prior year. This growth was driven by a strong focus on finding efficiencies within our business, along with actual energy being reported under our actual corporate segment in 2024. This growth supported our operations, capital program, and normal course financial commitments. Looking ahead, we continue to have significant growth aspirations across our existing investments at ADCO, and share owners can expect that new investments we make will be tied to our proven strategy of investing within the essential services space. Further, our capital investment plan over the medium term at the ADCO level is expected to be primarily funded by our internally generated cash flow. Before I turn the call over to Adam to discuss ATCO structures in more detail, I want to speak to our ATCO investment portfolio briefly. To maintain our exceptional dividend resiliency, our portfolio has been constructed to provide a balance between yield and long-term growth. This balance ensures we have stable and reliable earnings and cash flows to support not only our dividends, but also investments we expect to make within our existing businesses to drive long-term growth. As a final point, we will continue to focus on demonstrating the value of ATCO structures, as we believe the market is currently undervaluing this investment. Despite APRA structures now delivering an annual adjusted EBITDA of over $240 million, along with 10 quarters in a row of year-over-year adjusted earnings growth, it continues to be valued at a significant discount compared to our North American peers, which trade at 8 to 10 times EBITDA. We look forward to continuing our investor marketing efforts throughout 2025 and beyond to talk more about this. And with that, I will now pass it over to Adam to further discuss our Atco Structures business.