Doman Building Materials Group Ltd.

Greetings and welcome to the Dome and Building Materials Group second quarter 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ali Madhavi, Investor Relations. Thank you, Ali. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for Doman Building Materials' second quarter of 2023 Financial Results Conference call. Joining me on this call this morning are the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Amar Doman, and Chief Financial Officer, James Cote. If you have not seen the news release which was issued after the close of market yesterday, it is available on the company's website as well as on CDAR along with our MD&A and financial statements. I would also like to remind you that a replay of this call will be accessible until midnight on August 18th. Following management's presentations and remarks on the second quarter results, we will conduct a Q&A session for analysts only. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to join the queue for questions. Before we begin, we are required to provide the following statements regarding forward-looking information, which is made on behalf of Dolman Building Materials Group Limited and all of its representatives on this call. Remarks and answers to your questions today may contain forward-looking information about future events or the company's future performance. This information is subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ materially. Any information regarding forward-looking statements is made as of the date of this call and the company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. Please read the forward-looking statements and risk factors in the MD&A as these outline the material factors which could cause or would cause actual results to the firm. The company will not provide guidance regarding future earnings during today's call. Management does not anticipate providing guidance in future quarterly or interim communications with investors.

I'd like to turn the call over to Omar. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on today's call. On the back of a strong start to the year with our first quarter results, we're very pleased and encouraged with how the second quarter unfolded. During our last call, I highlighted that we continued to work through pricing volatility in a challenging year over year pricing comparatives. We like where it sits at present times. These trends continue to exist in our day-to-day activities. However, our focus remains on what we can control to ensure we maximize margins and free cash flow generation. Our teams focus on inventory management with the goal of optimizing gross margin performance combined with our constant efforts on overall cost management. We're key contributors to our success in a strong second quarter. Demand also remains steady across all key end markets during the quarter with volumes in various categories showing no sign of wavering. However, given the lower pricing for construction materials on a year-over-year basis, revenues were lower in the second quarter when compared to the same period last year as expected, but at much improved margins. To put this in numbers, gross margin for the second quarter was 17% compared to just under 12 a year ago. Our financial and operational performance in the second quarter is a testament to our ability to work through volatile markets and our team's track record on managing the business through similar cycles. Throughout the quarter, we remain laser-focused, as always, on our margins and optimizing our balance sheet. To put the decline in lumber pricing and commodity pricing in perspective, year-over-year lumber is down in price 51%, OSB is down 54%, plywood is down 39% in price. Our ongoing cost management focus on operational efficiencies and successful integration efforts enabled the company to realize strong gross margin and EBITDA margin performance, despite the massive deflation in commodity pricing. I am both pleased with and very proud of our financial performance, specifically from a pricing trend perspective, where we have had to be extremely responsive to industry-wide price volatility, while ensuring that our first-class level of service remains on point. As a result of our collected efforts, revenues amounted to $710 million, Gross margin remained strong at 17% or $121 million. EVA DA amounted to a strong $66 million. Net earnings came in just under $30 million. And we paid our 55th quarter in a row of dividends at $0.14 a share. Looking ahead, we are cautiously optimistic as we believe that the pricing environment and market demand is nearing equilibrium at healthy levels. While we continue to manage our costs and always look for growth opportunities. Our balance sheet optimization strategy is also tracking well with roughly 230 million of debt reduction since our transformative acquisition of Hickson Lumber two years ago. Debt reduction is a key priority for us as we look forward to having the solid, growth-friendly and fire-ready balance sheet for opportunistic acquisitions that we are always working on. As always, we remain confident in our ability to work through volatile markets diligently while serving our customers' needs at the highest level of service. We remain excited about our growth profile and our overall prospects of the business We have built a solid, diverse, and resilient business in North America with a broad and growing footprint, which we are extremely proud of. I want to thank our team across North America, our customers, and our suppliers for working so well with Dolman Building Materials for another strong quarter with all of our partners, and again, starting with our staff. With that, I'm going to hand the call over to Jay Cote, our CFO, who's going to take us through the numbers, and then we'll take some calls from analysts later on. Thanks very much, and Jay, over to you. Thank you, Amar, and good morning, everyone.