Medical Facilities Corporation

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Medical Facilities Corporation's 2025 First Quarter Earnings Call. After management remarks, this call will include a question and answer session whereby qualified equity analysts will be permitted to ask questions. Before turning the call over to management, listeners are reminded that today's call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of Canadian provincial securities laws. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. For additional information, please consult the MD&A for this quarter, the risk factors section of the annual information form, and medical facilities, other filings with Canadian securities regulators. Medical facilities does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law. Such statements speak only as of-the-date media. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Jason Redman, President and CEO of Medical Facilities. Please go ahead, Mr. Redman.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone.

Joining me on the call is our Chief Financial Officer, David Watson. As usual, please note that all dollar amounts that follow are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise specified. Earlier this morning, we reported our first quarter results. Our news release, financial statements, and MD&A are available on our website and have been filed in CDAR+. As you know, there has been a great amount of economic uncertainty these past few months, both in Canada and the U.S. Despite this uncertainty, we are proud to report that our first quarter performance was in line with the strong first quarter we had last year, which benefited from additional surgical day due to the leap year. In the first quarter this year, we had facility service revenue of $81.7 million, which was essentially on par with the prior year, and EBITDA of $17.3 million, which represented an increase of 0.7%. It's also worth noting that even with one less surgical day, our surgical cases were up 2.2% in the quarter. In keeping with our strategic focus on returning capital to shareholders, It should be no surprise that the highlight of the quarter was a successful return of $42.3 million of the proceeds from the sale of Black Hills Surgical Hospital to shareholders through our substantial issuer bid. Under the SIB, we purchased and canceled just under 3.4 million common shares, which represented approximately 14.7% of the issued and outstanding common shares on a non-diluted basis as of the close of business on February 23, 2025. which was the last full trading day prior to the date we announced the amended terms of the SIB. During the quarter, we also repurchased 182,600 common shares under a normal course issuer bid, returning an additional $2 million to shareholders and further demonstrating our commitment to shareholder value. Our financial position remains very strong, with a consolidated cash balance of $65.7 million at quarter end, providing MSC the stability and flexibility to navigate the evolving economic environment while continuing to drive operational excellence and simultaneously exploring options on how best to allocate remaining capital from the sale of Black Hills Surgical Hospital. Before passing the call to David, I want to give a shout out to Arkansas Surgical Hospital, which has ranked fifth in the US in terms of lowest hospital readmission rates according to CMS. Ash was also recently named the finalist by AY Magazine for Best Doctoral in Hospital and Best Specialty Hospital in Arkansas. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to David to review our financial results for the quarter.