Bombardier Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Bombardier third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Francis Richer de la Fleche, Vice President, FP&A and Investor Relations for Bombardier. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Bombardier's earnings call for the third quarter, and it's September 30th. I wish to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the financial performance of the corporation. There are risks that actual events or results may differ materially from these statements. For additional information on forward-looking statements and underlying assumptions, please refer to the MD&A. I am making this cautionary statement on behalf of each speaker on this call. With me today is our President and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Martel, and our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Bart Demoski, to review our operations and financial results for the third quarter of 2024.

I would now like to turn over the discussion to Eric. So good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I am delighted to speak to you about another very positive quarter for Bombardier. Our services strategy yielded record results. Our aircraft sales team is very active in helping sustain our cruising altitude of one on the book to build. And finally, our defense team continues to put points on the board. The Pegasus program is a great example. A few weeks ago, we just celebrated the first flight of Pegasus aircraft along with our partners at Ensold and Lufthansa Technik. This marks the beginning of the flight testing phases for this new generation German program. Turning to the results, Bart and I will go through the detail of our performance shortly. But let me start by taking a minute to provide some color on how we are shaping up to close the year. All the ingredients are in place to deliver our fourth quarter and our 2024 guidance. Clearly, the fourth quarter has always trended as the busiest in the industry. This year is no different, with the exception being that we are still working through the same supply chain headache as the rest of the industry. I am happy to reaffirm that we are all prepared. I review our operations daily, and as of today, we have excellent line of sight on all deliveries for the next two months. Our team has worked hard to ensure inventories are in place and the completion sites are equipped to do what they do best. When it comes to service volumes, it's simply steady as it goes. And it's been steadily going up year after year. It's a great business for us. We continue to grow our capture rate by making things easy for customer and ramping up new facilities. we are well on our way to meet our long-term growth targets with room to spare. In terms of keeping our book-to-bill on pace, the market is well balanced and is providing to be resilient. Of course, that doesn't mean it's excellent everywhere all at once, but that being said, we continue to be successful because we focus on what we control. We have ramped up our international presence to build deep relationships with customers. The same is true on the defense side. With this strategic approach, Bombardier remains ahead of the curve on nurturing customer relationships to capture emerging opportunities as they arise. Not chasing the market is important to drive operational predictability. We have boots on the ground everywhere in the world. And ultimately, our family-like approach has set us apart and elevated our brand. Geographical markets are just as important as customer segments. We are diversified and perform on both fronts. I am happy to underline that today's reported backlog stands at exactly the same point as last year. thanks to the diversity in terms of both geography and customer types. Having exceptional product always goes a long way. The Global 8000 is a great example of our team's ability to not just push boundaries, but also define them for the industry. The Global 8000 will be the fastest civilian aircraft since the Concorde. I am proud to say that our team has their brand on the first units, their hands on the first unit, sorry. In case you missed it, at NBAA base this year, we announced the program's reduction has begun with our site in Texas, Quebec, and Mexico, working on the first major structures. We also celebrated reaching more than 60 speed records on the Global 7500. This plane's first years of service have been remarkable. The plane has literally flown circles around the competition and the globe, making the most of a five-year head start. This year, the Global 7500 fleet will grow to more than 200 aircraft. I have the privilege to personally meet customers around the world as they select the Global 7500 or prepare for delivery. I could easily fill this entire call-up with the great stories they have shared in terms of what the plane's performance envelope has unlocked for their productivity. But we are here, of course, to review the third quarter. The standout KPI is also closely tied up to our customer. We reach $528 million of service revenue on a total of more than $2 billion for the quarter. Those results speak for themselves in terms of how we have elevated both the client experience and our ability to execute the plan. These efforts were also recognized in an industry survey where Bombardier Service Operating placed first versus industry peers. Overall, we are successfully ramping up large service expansion. We are capturing more heavy maintenance as well as capturing power by the hour customer who opt into our smart part services. Bombardier innovated that model decades ago and today it has expanded to include offering for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and digital services like SmartLink Plus for which we see a high operate at time of delivery. Speaking of deliveries, we landed on a solid mix with 30 units, even after pulling some into the second quarter, as we discussed last July. Considering this and the typical Q3 seasonality related to vacation period, this is a very solid performance by our team. On the profit side, we continue to see year-over-year growth. reaching $307 million of adjusted EBITDA. That's 8% more than the same quarter last year. Bart will go into further detail in just a moment, but I do want to underline that our team has performed extremely well managing the business and maximizing the bottom line. We have given ourselves room to maneuver in a flexible and agile way. These are without a doubt two important attributes to keep in a dynamic environment. It allows the entire team to remain laser focused on our priority of deleveraging. A recent example of this is increasing our credit revolving facility by $150 million, subsequent to quarter end. Overall, we have set ourselves up to succeed in 2024 and make it another milestone year for Bombardier. I continue to be very encouraged by our strong fundamentals, by our year-over-year growth, and by overall momentum in all parts of the business. All of this has led us to be recognized as part of the TSX-30 list for the second year in a row. This recognition from the Toronto Stock Exchange for the top performing companies on the TSX is a big accomplishment for the team as it takes our performance for the past three years into consideration. To cover more on that and our detailed financial, I'd like to end the call over to Bart.