Brookfield Business Corporation

Welcome to the Brookfield Business Partners first quarter 2022 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, simply press star and one on your touchtone phone. Should you need assistance during the call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and 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. On the call with me is Cyrus Madden, Chief Executive Officer, and Jaspreet Dell, Chief Financial Officer. We are also joined today by Patrick Fragman, Chief Executive Officer of Westinghouse Electric Company, our nuclear technology services business. I'll first turn the call over to Cyrus to share an update on our business, and then Patrick will discuss our strategic priorities and recent developments at Westinghouse. Jaspreet will finish with a discussion of our financial results. We'll then be available to take your questions. And with that, I'll pass it over to Cyrus.

Thanks very much, Alan. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We've had a great start to 2022. Adjusted EBITDA increased 30% over the prior year, and we're continuing to be very pleased with the overall performance of our operations. Most of our businesses are global providers of essential products and services. Their scale, pricing power, and durable market positions are serving us well, in a volatile environment. We've had a busy few months since our last update, announcing several meaningful acquisitions and committing $1.6 billion of equity across seven new investments. Each of the businesses we acquired were at reasonable valuations and are either market leaders or businesses with exciting growth potential that we can scale. These new businesses should contribute to our growth and the substantial levels of cash flows our operations are generating today. In April, we agreed to acquire CDK Global for $8.3 billion. CDK is a leading provider of technology services and software solutions that help automotive dealers run their businesses better. This is a very high-quality, market-leading business and exactly the type of opportunity we've been looking for to continue growing our presence in the technology area. We're going to leverage our operating capabilities to enhance that business's services and productivity to grow margins and cash flows and improve CDK's value proposition to its customers. The other technology services investment we announced during the quarter was Magnati, a leading technology-enabled payment solutions provider in the Middle East. We're investing $65 million in partnering with the seller to help enhance the business's technology offering and accelerate its growth. In March, we entered into a partnership to acquire Nielsen, the global leader in third-party audience measurement, data, and analytics across all forms of media and content. Nielsen provides essential measurement data to the $100 billion video and audio advertising industry. As the media landscape continues to evolve, Nielsen is really well positioned to lead the way in providing a unified measure of viewership across all media platforms. We're making our investment through preferred equity, providing us with governance and a level of downside protection, while also enabling us to fully participate in the company's upside potential. We also announced the acquisition of La Trobe, an Australian non-bank lender and asset manager. La Trobe plays a critical role in lending to a growing proportion of high-quality borrowers in Australia who require specialized underwriting expertise. It also manages credit funds on behalf of high net worth retail investors. We're investing about $250 million for 35% ownership and plan to support Latrobe's growth by diversifying its product platform to grow its asset management business. During the quarter, we made two non-control investments in companies to help finance their growth. In May, we provided Corus Aviation with $374 million of financing to help its growth plans. We also agreed to subscribe for $267 million of convertible preferred shares in Jindal an India-based flexible packaging company. Our share of both commitments is about $100 million. Now, apart from growth, we're moving forward with initiatives that will meaningfully enhance our liquidity and crystallize value for our business. We're currently progressing efforts to monetize our interest in Westinghouse, and we're positioning Clarios for possible sale or public listening. Conditions to support the dispositions or for an IPO of each of these businesses have improved markedly over the last couple of years, and the proceeds we expect to generate from these sales will fund our growth for years. A lot has changed since we pursued a public offering of Clarios shares last summer. Investor focus has rotated from growth back to businesses with underlying profitability and cash flows. And Clarios has performed exceptionally well, generating record financial performance, paying down debt, and executing on its operational improvement plans. All of this progress should help us optimize the execution of a future IPO. To remind you, every single car, whether it's a full battery electric, hybrid, stop-start, or internal combustion engine, requires a low voltage battery solution. The demand placed on these batteries only continues to increase with the shift toward electric vehicles. Clarios is the leader in advanced battery technologies largely designed to support the needs of electric vehicles. Over the last 12 months alone, Clarios has partnered on over 30 new full battery EV platforms and expects to be delivering solutions on nearly 200 full battery EV platforms within the next five years. Westinghouse, our nuclear technology services company, is a business of similar exceptional quality. Patrick is going to talk more about what's going on in the business, but I'll just say that Westinghouse has really come into its own over the last few years. The business is benefiting from exceptionally strong industry tailwinds and is in a great position as the global leader in nuclear technology and we invite you to ask Patrick any questions you have. As you know, our objective is to build long-term growth in intrinsic value per unit. We've had a very successful start to the year working toward this objective. Our focus over the coming months is to close our recently announced acquisitions and advance our monetization initiatives. We look forward to updating you on our progress and thank you for your continued support. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Patrick.