GreenFirst Forest Products Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Green First's first quarter of 2025 results conference call. Please note that all lines are muted to prevent any background noise. During this conference call, Green First representatives will be making certain statements about future financial and operational performance, business outlook, and capital plans. These statements may contain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities law. Such statements involve certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. which may cause Green First actual or future results and performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied in these statements. Additional information about these risks, factors, and assumptions is included in Green First MD&A and annual AIF, which can be accessed on the company's website or through CEDAR+. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Please submit your questions through the online portal. I will now pass it over to Joel Fournier to begin the management presentation.

Thank you very much, Joanna, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 2025 earning call. I'm Joel Fournier, the Chief Executive Officer of Green Forest Forest Products. Today, I'm joined by Peter Ferrante, our CFO, and Michel Lessard, our President. We are pleased to report a positive EBITDA of $5.1 million and a net income of $920,000 for Q1 2025. These results represent an improvement compared to last quarter, Q4 2024, when we recorded a negative EBITDA of $913,000 and a net loss from continuing operation of $26.6 million. The stronger performance this quarter was primarily driven by higher lumber prices. However, Both shipment and production were lower than expected due to uncertainty created by tariff development and weather-related disruption in northern Ontario. We began the quarter facing uncertainty following the announcement of the potential 25 tariff on Canadian lumber by the U.S. government on February 1, 2025. Just three days later, this tariff was removed. However, implementation was again treated on March 6 and finally on April 2, April 2nd, lumber was officially excluded from the proposed tariff going forward, which is a good news. This back and forth created a negative buyer sentiment for the quarter, which negatively impacted our sales volume. During the quarter, lumber price increased, effectively absorbing most of the potential tariff risk, which had been over and above the current duty we paid. While this helped mitigate the financial impact on producers, it unfortunately contributed to higher home construction costs for American consumers. Towards the end of Q1, as the market began to stabilize, we observed a return to a more normal sales level. We continue to exercise caution in our cash management strategy. The U.S. Department of Commerce has initiated an investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act to determine the effect on US national security of import of wood products. The reports with this finding are expected by November 2025, which could lead to potential imposition of new tariffs. We currently pay countervailing and anti-dumping duty, CVD and ADD, at a combined rate of 14.4%. This rate is expected to increase in approximately 0.45% starting late Q3, which will primarily impact the end consumer. As a reminder, Green First made the strategic decision to sell its right for potential reimbursement for duty paid in 21-22 in Q4 2024. We continue to believe this was the right decision for the company. To summarize the quarter relative to Q4 2024, If we start with production, it was slightly lower. Q1 production reached 101 million FBM, slightly lower than Q4 with 103 million FBM. Some of our mill finished under target due to extreme weather conditions, but we do have a mitigation plan to avoid downtime for next winter. January and February was lower for production, but we saw a pickup in March. In fact,

The Kapuskasing sawmill broke four production records during the month.