D2L Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the D2L Inc. FIS Call 2024 First Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided for you at that time for questions. If anyone has any difficulty hearing the conference, you may press star zero for operator assistance at any time. Listeners are reminded that portions of today's discussion will include statements that contain forward-looking information. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking information. Further, certain material factors or assumptions were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information. For identification and discussion of such risks uncertainties, factors, and assumptions, as well as further information concerning forward-looking statements. Please refer to the section entitled Forward-Looking Information and the risks identified in the company's annual and interim MD&A, or most recently, filed annual information form in each case as filed under the company's profile on CEDA at www.ceda.com. In addition, during this call, reference will be made to various non-IFRS financial measures, including constant currency revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, and free cash flow. These non-IFRS financial measures do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other public companies. Please refer to the company's MD&A for the three months ended April 30th, 2023 for more information about these and certain other non-IFRS financial measures, including where applicable a reconciliation of historical non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures from our financial statements. This morning's call is being recorded on June 8th, 2023 at 8.30am Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. John Baker, Chief Executive Officer of D2L. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our Q1 Fiscal 24 earnings call. After the market closed yesterday, we released our financial results for the period ending April 30, 2023. You can find this information on the investor section of our website at D2L.com. Please note that the results we're discussing today are in U.S. dollars. I'm pleased to be joined this morning by Stephen Laster, our president, and Josh Huff, our CFO. It was a strong start to the new fiscal year for D2L. Consistent with the themes from our year-end call, our comments today will focus on four key points. One, we're making excellent progress on our plan to balance top-line growth with profitability and operational productivity. I'm incredibly proud of how the team is delivering, and this puts us on track to achieve our outlook. Two, we have a clear momentum in our largest market, higher education, with significant new customer wins already this year and a healthy prospect pipeline. Three, we continue to demonstrate a strong value proposition in the corporate market, which is allowing us to expand our customer base in that important market. And four, we're making good progress on the expansion of our evolution of our learning platform, including the most recent acquisition of Connected Shopping. As we work to deliver balanced growth, we're pleased with the financial results for the first quarter. First quarter revenue was $44.2 million and up 9% on a constant currency basis. And ARR was $170.9 million and up 10% on a constant currency basis. Our gross margins increased 470 basis points year over year. And our profit metrics improved considerably with meaningful growth in adjusted EBITDA and positive net income in the quarter. From a sales perspective, We continue to add new customers in all our markets. In higher education, a strong competitive win rate and momentum is allowing us to capitalize on renewed RFP activity to add high-quality institutions across many different markets. New clients in North America include Taylor University, a 175-year-old institution in Indiana that's ranked among the top three best Midwestern colleges in the US. The University of Niagara Falls, a new university that will open in 2024, and aims to deliver technology-oriented education to prepare learners for a digital world is yet another great example of clients adding this year. And earlier this week, we announced we're partnering with Western University, which is ranked in the top 1% of higher education institutions globally, to enrich the students' experience for more than 40,000 students. This important win adds to a growing list of marquee clients in recent months. Our international teams also continue to do great work building out market leadership in focus countries and penetrating new regions. In recent months, we've added Charles Stewart University in Australia, a multi-campus public university serving more than 40,000 students. And we welcome Universidade São Francisco, a well-regarded university in Brazil, which adds to the growing momentum we're seeing in that country. In our K-12 market, we're excited to work with Savannah Chatham County Public School System in Georgia to accelerate their digital transformation. This system is one of the 10 largest in the state, serving more than 35,000 students. And in corporate, more and more organizations are choosing D2L to address the growing demand for upskilling, to accelerate learning, to support productivity gains, and to adapt to the future of work. And in the nonprofit market, one of our newest customers is Year Up, an organization that's making a great impact on the lives of young adults across the U.S. by empowering them to move from minimal wage to meaningful careers. As I visit customers and prospects across the globe, their feedback reinforces why we are winning. For example, I often hear about our superior ease of use and the impact that we're having on learning outcomes. And as many organizations adapt to the new demands from learners, they now need a platform that supports the unique needs of the learners in all learning modalities, in person and online. It's also encouraging to hear more leaders planning that next step in a digital transformation and building for the future, a future that embraces competency-based and personalized learning. Our platform positions us well to take advantage of these opportunities. And more important than anything, D2L is winning because we're a trusted partner to help our customers accelerate their digital transformation. We provide great technology, and our people work shoulder to shoulder to make the technology a success in supporting their clients' organizational goals. Invariably, my conversations with leaders in education and corporate markets also cover the opportunities and challenges that AI presents. For those who don't know our history, D2L has a long and proven track record of harnessing the best of technology for authentic learning experiences. And we've been a pioneer in using artificial intelligence and machine learning for productivity gains, for feedback, for developing insights, and for predicting at-risk students. These are examples of artificial intelligence that are already embedded in our products today. I use these moments to listen and learn and to reassure that we're on the right partner track to help them adapt and address the challenges of AI. And at the heart of adapting is learning. Our company will continue to adapt and learn and incorporate the latest technologies into our offerings, and in partnership with our customers, we'll continue to humanize the learning moment. It's undeniable that AI will change the learning experience, and it will also change many jobs and careers. This will create a significant demand for upskilling, which we continue to view as a long-term growth driver for our business. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Stephen to talk about our progress on other key growth pillars. Over to you, Stephen.

Thanks, John, and good morning. Our team continues to focus on and deliver an efficient and scaled operation while accelerating gains in our core markets. We remain committed to ensuring our customer success through our award-winning software and services and to partnering with them through their ongoing digital transformation. It was a successful and eventful first quarter across many parts of the business, and I want to express my sincere thanks to the entire D2L team. I'll call out several key developments. First, and consistent with our plan to complement organic growth with disciplined M&A, we announced the acquisition of UK-based Connected Shopping, the makers of Coarse Merchant software. D2L has worked with Coarse Merchant as an integration partner and reseller for over seven years, and we currently have more than 100 D2L customers using the software. We are attracted to this business for multiple reasons. John talked about the upskilling trend that is impacting both education and corporate learning. This is fueling a lot of client demand for continuing studies, which is where the course merchant solution fits perfectly. The platform improves course and program discovery and simplifies payment and enrollment. It's been great to welcome the connected shopping team to D2L, and we look forward to growing together as we bring this product to more of our clients and prospects. Across the company, we continue to build a digital-first company in all aspects of our core operations. This includes enhanced use of technology in sales and marketing to drive growth and impact. To help accelerate these efforts, we recently announced the addition of a new chief marketing officer, Jen Ogden-Reese, who joined us to lead our global marketing function. Jen is a highly accomplished leader with a great track record of growth. and we're excited to have her on the D2L team. While there's always work to be done, we're making good iterative progress in building a market-leading, highly efficient, and profitable operation at D2L. Our win rates are strong, our roadmap is market right, our gross margins are improving, and we're showing growth on the bottom line. And the credit goes to the entire D2L team. We appreciate the drive we are seeing across the organization and the resulting success. I will now turn the call over to Josh for a deeper dive into the financials. Thanks, Stephen, and good morning.