Calian Group Ltd.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jennifer McCaughey, Director of Investor Relations at Callion. Thank you for joining us for Callion's Fiscal Year 24 Review and Management Update video webcast. With me this morning, live from Ottawa, are Kevin Ford, Chief Executive Officer, and Patrick Houston, Chief Financial Officer. In today's presentation, we will review our fiscal year 24 results and key achievements. We will also do a deeper dive of our recent strategic acquisitions and partnerships and conclude with our fiscal year 25 guidance and our plans to grow beyond a billion dollars. Before we begin, please take a moment to review the caution regarding forward-looking statements, which is now being displayed on your screen. a few housekeeping items to take note before we begin. This webcast is being recorded. There will be a Q&A at the end of the presentation. Analysts will have the opportunity to ask questions. If you are not an analyst but would like to ask a question, please feel free to submit it in the designated box, and we will be happy to address it after the webcast. If you are having technical issues, please press on the help button and a technician will assist you. On that note, I will turn it over to Kevin.

Thank you, Jennifer. I just want to give a few introductory remarks. First and foremost, welcome everybody. It's our first time using this format, so we're looking forward to your feedback. But we thought it was important with our year end, beginning of a new fiscal year, to give you some thoughts on results, on strategy. So really appreciate your time this morning. When I start with fiscal 24, clearly from my viewpoint, a lot of positives here from the company, very strong year. We had another record revenue in adjusted EBITDA year, our seventh consecutive year of double digit revenue growth. Our EBITDA growth surpassed our top line growth. New contract signings of 785 million and a healthy backlog of 1.2 billion. So again, very strong. And also, we've worked on our two new presidents with Mike and Valerie joining the company. And they've been bringing new energies and thought process into the company. It's been exciting to see them join the company with such a vigor on growing their parts of the business. On globalization, international revenues are now 32% of our total. And that's come a long way since I've got here. And clearly, a key part of our strategy is the globalization of Kine. And it's great to see those results demonstrate we're doing exactly that. On the acquisition front, coming off the Hawaii Pacific Teleport acquisition in August of 23, we've completed three acquisitions, and Patrick's going to talk to them. Decisive, the nuclear assets of MDA, and Mabway. Investing close to $90 million in our M&A engine at attractive multiples and supported our innovation and diversification goals. I'm also going to talk to some of the customers and partners that we're seeing and basically excited to be working with, Walmart and Microsoft, the Ottawa Senators, our sponsorship and partnership with the Ottawa Senators. Clearly, our goal is not only to deliver, but to raise brand awareness in our target markets, and these are just some exciting announcements that I'll talk to you a bit later in the podcast. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Patrick to talk about our fiscal 24 results, and I'll come back with some comments on 24 and our strategy moving forward. Over to you, Patrick.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning. As Kevin said, we're pleased to announce another record year for Kalyan, our seventh consecutive record year. Revenue increased 13% driven by growth in all of our service offerings. Acquisition growth was strong this year at 11% with contributions from HPT, Decisive, the nuclear assets of MDA, and Mabway. Strong organic growth in health, as well as growth in our global defense business, was offset by reductions by the Canadian Armed Forces and our domestic training services. Overall, organic growth was 2%, but would have been closer to our 5% target when isolating the impact of the Canadian Armed Forces dynamic. EBITDA growth was strong this year, increasing 30%, significantly outpacing our revenue growth. Margins ended at 11.5%. That's the highest level in company history. Free cash flow increased 29% to 58 million, excluding working capital. This represents a conversion rate of 68% from adjusted EBITDA. Working capital dynamics continue to be positive this year. We recaptured $35 million in working capital and our efficiency improved from 14% last year to 7% in FY24. We deploy capital across multiple initiatives. As Kevin mentioned, $90 million across three acquisitions this year. Our CapEx was approximately 12 million, mainly growth CapEx for our IT and space businesses. We returned $13 million to shareholders in the form of dividends, and we continue to buy back shares. Last year, we purchased $6 million of shares, and we've continued to buy back shares in October and November. Adjusted EBITDA per share, operating free cash flow per share, and adjusted EPS per share all up over 25% from last year, and all represent a high level for Callion. We're able to do this by increasing gross margins, focusing on growing our more profitable businesses, and remaining disciplined on our balance sheet. Our balance sheet continues to be in a great position. Debt stood at 90 million, and on a net date basis, 38 million at the end of Q4. That's a leverage ratio of 0.4 times, well below our target of 2.5 times. and we have over $200 million of liquidity ready to deploy on both our M&A and buyback agendas. We completed three strategic acquisitions this year, which will contribute significantly to Calian in the coming years. Let's take a moment to look at those deals. We acquired Decisive Group in 2023 for a purchase price of $50 million. Our strategy is to be a leading local provider in multiple key North American regions for cloud, cyber, and IT solutions. The team at Decisive has been a trusted provider for a diverse set of clients with a particular focus in defense and security, a highly regulated market. This is very synergistic with Kalyan's core business of serving defense and security customers with a host of solutions over the last 25 years. Decisive portfolio allowed us to round out our offering in the Ottawa and federal procurement market, a key growth driver for us in the coming years. The acquisition also brings enhanced scale to our overall IT business, which will provide superior economics for our existing US and Canadian offerings. Since acquiring Decisive, we've seen considerable revenue and EBITDA growth. Growth since the acquisition on an annualized basis surpassed 25%. Through existing contract vehicles and a strong sales and delivery team, they've been able to respond to growing demand from federal defense and security customers. Our government cloud offering will be a key differentiator as we support our customers on their ongoing transition to a secure sovereign solution. And we'll be leveraging the team as we push into the Canadian commercial market and bring Kalyan's differentiated IT solutions portfolio to key regions in North America. Let's take a look at the deal we did with the MDA earlier this year. We purchased their nuclear assets and were able to add it to our existing nuclear consulting business, which has been growing consistently within Callion over the last five years. Nuclear power, a backbone of the Canadian electrical grid, has experienced significant tailwinds as various jurisdictions seek out ways to expand capacity while minimizing greenhouse gases. We quickly integrated the two groups that are now able to bring end-to-end solutions to our customers. This includes safety analysis, environmental studies, system engineering, and robotics, to name just a few. We continue to expand the combined teams to meet growing demand from our customers. This team's also gotten off to a strong start, posting in excess of 25% EBITDA growth since the acquisition. We also announced earlier this year a considerable amount of new contracts with nuclear operators in provinces across Canada, which will ensure continued growth into FY25. We've also started to bring some of Calion's other assets to our nuclear customers. This includes integrating our market-leading GNSS antennas on our nuclear robotics solution to further enhance its capability, as well as we kicked off our first project in virtual reality training by duplicating a nuclear power plant to be used to rehearse various procedures in the future. I think this transaction highlights three key factors for Kalyan. The ability to pair an acquisition with an existing Kalyan business to accelerate the momentum, integrate the business quickly to achieve better efficiencies, and finally capitalize on market trends and grow aggressively. Let's take a look at our most recent acquisition, Maboy. This is our third acquisition outside Canada aimed at expanding our military training into the European continent. Maboy supports the UK Ministry of Defence in delivering large-scale role-playing environments, which supports real-world training. Following the acquisition, Calion is now one of the main training partners for Canada, the UK and NATO. This includes training exercise delivered on a daily basis across the globe, but also a seat at the table as each of these groups develops their long-term defence strategies. The combination of Calion and Maboy has resulted in, again, a very strong start. Growth in demand and the team's ability to respond and deliver has resulted in strong financial growth. The urgency in Europe continues to increase due to the continuing conflict in Ukraine. Almost all European nations have announced increases in military spending and are making significant investments. Training and operational readiness will be a key skill for these nations as they deploy across Europe, and this is where Callion's broad capabilities come in. To recap on M&A, three strategic assets that enhance our offerings across Canada and Europe became part of Callion this year. We acquired all of them at attractive prices. All three have grown significantly since becoming part of the broader Callion offering, and all three have significant growth tailwind behind them for the coming years. Now I'm going to pass it back over to Kevin to speak about some partnerships we've recently announced.