ADENTRA Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ADENTRA Q4 and full-year 2023 results conference call. Note that at this time, all lines are in the listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. And if at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also note that this call is being recorded on March 18, 2024. And I would like to turn the conference over to Ian Thorpe, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sylvie, and good morning to those joining today as we discuss Adentra's financial results for the fourth quarter and year-ended 2023. With me on the call are Rob Brown, Adentra's President and CEO, and Fez Karmali, Vice President and CFO. Adentra's Q4 and full-year 2023 earnings release financial statements, MD&A, and other year-end filings are available on the investor section of our website at www.adentragroup.com. These statements have also been filed on Adentra's profile on CDAR Plus at www.cdarplus.ca. I want to remind listeners that management's comments during this call may include forward-looking statements. These statements involve various known and unknown risks and uncertainties and and are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the text in Edentra's earnings press release and financial filings for discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with these forward-looking statements. All dollar figures referred to today are in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise. I'd now like to turn the call over to Rob Brown.

Thanks, Ian, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us this morning as we report our results for Edenture in 2023. I'll start today with our key financial and business highlights for the year. Fez Carmalli, our CFO, will then provide details of our Q4 financial results. I'll finish off our prepared remarks with our outlook for 2024. We had a strong finish to the year with fourth quarter sales of $515 million. adjusted EBITDA of $44 million, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.46. Recall that our sales through the first nine months of 2023 were down 14% when compared to the same period in 2022. In the fourth quarter of 2023, our sales were down 10% as compared to Q4 2022, an improvement as compared to the trend through the first nine months of the year. The fourth quarter and our full year results were supported by the scale and diversity of our platform. We operate a geographically diverse network across North America, participating in multiple end markets, including residential, repair and remodel, and commercial construction. We sell into varied customer channels, including industrial manufacturers, home centers, and pro dealers. And we service our customers with a broad mix of specialty building products. While our 2023 results did not match the record breaking performance of 2022, which benefited from unusually strong demand and tight supply, our platform led to stable quarter to quarter sales and gross margin on a sequential basis through 2023. As it relates to gross margins, I'm pleased with our success in maintaining gross margins consistently above 20%, even as we reduced our inventories by over 120 million during the year. We've now delivered 11 consecutive quarters with gross margins above 20% and believe we've established a new sustainable level of profitability for our business. Higher gross margins are supported by expanded access into the pro dealer and home center channels through our acquisitions of Novo and Midam. Growth in our higher-value product mix, supported by our global sourcing program. A product portfolio that includes a selection of higher-margin, ready-to-install products, such as pre-hang doors, stair-park kits, and molding solutions. And the use of data analytics in our digital platforms to deliver strong asset management and pricing discipline. I'm also excited about the progress we've made in our digital engagement strategy. A key component of this strategy are e-commerce sales, which account for 20% of our revenues. This represents significant progress from zero just a few years ago. We strongly believe our digital strategy will enhance long-term customer loyalty, increase customer order sizes, and support our sustained delivery of strong gross margins. The sales and margin performance, combined with tight management of operating expenses, led to strong operating cash flow before changes in working capital of $118 million. Our business model also realizes cash from the release of working capital in slower economic periods, and this generated an additional $120 million in operating cash flows in 2023. We primarily used these cash flows to reduce our debt by over $223 million. and bring our leverage ratio to 2.7 times at year end. The leverage ratio remains well within our target range. We also returned a total of 17.8 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. Approximately 2% of our issued and outstanding shares were repurchased and we paid 8.6 million in dividends in 2023. With the 8% increase in our dividend announced in Q3, We've now increased our dividend a total of 11 times in as many years. We believe that despite challenging market and economic conditions in 2023, our business demonstrated important stability and performed well. I want to thank the entire Dentra team for the dedication and persistence that drove this performance. I'll now pass the call to Fez to provide details of our Q4 financial results. Then I'll return to speak more about our outlook following that. Fez?