Brookfield Business Corporation

Welcome to the Brookfield Business Partners third quarter 2021 results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in a 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, simply press star and one on your touchtone telephone. Should you need assistance during the call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. Now, I'd like to turn the conference over to Alan Fleming. Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Fleming.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that in responding to questions and talking about our growth initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and future results may differ materially. For further information on known risk factors, I encourage you to review our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S., which are available on our website. Joining me today on the call is Cyrus Madden, Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Turcotte, Chief Operating Officer, and Jaspreet Dal, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll turn the call first over to Cyrus to provide an update on our business. Dennis will then discuss recent activities at our Nuclear Technology Services operations, and Jaspreet will finish with a review of our financial results. We'll then be available to take your questions. And with that, I'll pass it over to Cyrus.

Thanks, Ellen, and good morning, everyone. Appreciate you joining us today. We had a great quarter. We generated strong growth in EBITDA and FFO, and we continue to be really pleased with how our overall business is performing. We're working on a number of initiatives to continue building long-term value, and our balance sheet is in great shape. Last week, we reached an agreement to acquire Scientific Games Lottery Business for $5.8 billion. This business... is an essential provider of services and technology to most of the major government sponsored lottery programs around the world. Lotteries represent a critical and growing source of funding for governments globally. In many cases, proceeds from these programs are directly earmarked to fund important social infrastructure initiatives related to health care, education, senior services, infrastructure, and environmental protection. In fact, over $100 billion of lottery sales annually are directed to funding these types of programs. And with increasing budget deficits, we expect governments to rely even more on the proceeds generated from lottery programs as a funding alternative. Scientific games lottery business is really well positioned with long-term partnerships and the capabilities to meet the standards of service and security required by highly regulated lottery programs. Its broad offering includes design, distribution, systems, and turnkey technology solutions. The business is integrated across the lottery ecosystem, and its very clear value proposition has contributed to a high level of customer retention. We think we're acquiring this high quality business at a reasonable value. We plan to work with management to support its growth. We see opportunities to enhance service offerings to existing customers and also grow the customer base. As an essential service provider with a strong technology offering, the business is also very well positioned to benefit from the expected growth of digital lotteries around the world. We're funding approximately 30% of the equity on closing and with the balance of the equity from our institutional partners. In October, we closed our acquisition of Dexco Global. And just as a reminder, Dexco is a leading provider of highly engineered components, primarily for industrial trailers and towable equipment manufacturers. We invested about $400 million of the equity for 35% ownership stake. We're now in the early stages of onboarding and developing our plans for continued growth, expanding into adjacent products, and supporting its very successful acquisition strategy. We're also working to close our acquisition of Modulair Group, a leading provider of modular unit leasing services in Europe and Asia. We hope to complete this deal by year-end. These are all great businesses, and over the past few years, we've focused on acquiring similar types of larger scale, resilient operations, which has enhanced the overall profile of BBU. And when it comes time to start selling the larger businesses we've acquired, the size and scale of our monetizations will increase very substantially. From time to time, we'll also opportunistically acquire smaller businesses that we can grow and scale. Our recent acquisition of Aldo, which closed in August, is a great example of this. Aldo is a distributor of solar power kits for the distributed generation market in Brazil. This is a rapidly growing market in Brazil and Aldo is really well positioned. It's a market leader with scale, an efficient cost position, and a network of more than 11,000 independent resellers. We plan to support its growth by expanding its service offerings and broadening its product portfolio into adjacent markets that can benefit from increased demand for energy. On an overall basis, our business continues to grow. Our adjusted EBITDA is now $1.6 billion for the last year, well above $240 million it was five years ago. And our recent acquisitions will add about $400 million to our EBITDA based on their annual historical performance, which will increase as we execute on our value creation plan. On a per unit basis, our NAV has increased at an annual compound rate of 18%. We're very pleased with our overall progress. Looking forward, We're focused on closing and onboarding our recent acquisitions. We're also working to complete the launch of our paired corporate entity, Brookfield Business Corporations, and we hope to get this done around the end of this year, subject to regulatory approval. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Dennis.