Lassonde Industries Inc.

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Thank you for standing by. Welcome to La Sonde Industries' 2025 fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. The corporation's press release reporting its financial results was published yesterday after market close. It can be found on its website at Lassonde.com, along with the MD&A and financial statements. These documents are available on CEDAR Plus as well. A presentation supporting this conference call was also posted on the website. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star followed by zero for operator assistance at any time. Before turning to management's pre-recorded remarks, please be advised that this conference call will contain statements that are forward-looking within the meeting of Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on management's current expectations and assumptions and is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For discussion of key assumptions and risk factors, please refer to the forward-looking statements section of the MD&A. Also note that all figures expressed on today's call are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated, and that most amounts have been rounded to ease the presentation. This call will also include certain non-IFRS financial measures and ratios that are not standardized under IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures used by other issuers. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable IFRS measures and related definitions are provided in the appendix to the presentation and in the corporation's MD&A. This conference call is being recorded on Friday, March 27, 2026. I now turn the call over to Vince Tempano, Chief Executive Officer. Vince Tempano, Chief Executive Officer, Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm here with Eric Jem, our Chief Financial Officer. We appreciate your time today as we review our results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31st, 2025. Please turn to slide four. 2025 was a record year for Lausanne. We delivered record sales and a strong increase in profitability despite a challenging and rapidly evolving macroeconomic environment. Even with this context, Each of our divisions recorded sales growth over the prior year. These achievements reflect our team's continued focus on executing our strategy supported by a deep and diversified product portfolio. They also show the resilience of our business model and the effectiveness of commercial execution in a challenged demand environment. More specific to the fourth quarter, Sales increased 4.1% to $768 million, while net profit doubled to $54 million. Now let's turn to slide five for a closer look at operations, beginning with U.S. beverage activities. Lassonde gained market share in the fourth quarter, increasing its total volume while the category was down mid-single digits. Our private label business was in line with its category, as positive impacts from our build-back plan were balanced by pricing discipline. With our ability to bring more volume to market, we are well positioned to benefit from private label momentum, which is gaining shares consumers increasingly seek value in uncertain times. Market share gains were more important in our branded business, driven by our sharper focus on higher velocity SKUs, following key investments in single serve and juice box platforms at our North Carolina facility. We are increasingly reaping benefits from the relocation of production assets from a U.S. co-packer into our network. Over the coming months, this transition should continue to improve throughput, allowing us to capture additional volume across both U.S.-branded and private label products. As for a new facility in New Jersey, the pace of construction is progressing well. The project remains on budget and on schedule with the building expected to be enclosed in the upcoming weeks. We plan to gradually begin transferring existing production activities from the current facility by late 2026 and complete this phase in early 2027. Turning to slide six for Canadian beverage activities. While category volumes declined mid-single digits in the fourth quarter, we continue to gain market share. Lassonde's national brands meaningfully outpaced the category, supported by distribution gains across both shelf-stable and chilled products, and strong growth in single-serve formats. We continue to execute disciplined pricing execution alongside targeted promotional and marketing efforts, ensuring balance between pricing effectiveness brand building, and supporting consumer value in a challenging environment. For instance, our Oasis of Light marketing campaign launched in the quarter delivered strong results, enabling distribution gains, raising awareness and brand engagement, while reinforcing our Canadian heritage. In quarter four, we also continue to benefit from a bi-Canadian sentiment, but to a lesser extent. We also continue to reduce our commodity exposure through innovation by increasing the proportion of juice blends and of less than 100% juice beverages within our portfolio. Innovation is one of Lausanne's core strengths, as it allows us to capture opportunities in on-trend and growing beverage segments. To reinforce our commitment to innovation, we are developing a multi-year pipeline aimed at further reducing commodity exposure And more importantly, expanding consumption occasions by addressing evolving consumer beverage needs. Moving on to food service on slide seven. Food service activities had another strong quarter. Growth was driven by volume gains with broad line distributors in the United States and by ongoing progress in improving national account penetration in Canada. The deployment of our new bag-in-a-box aseptic packaging line continues to progress. We are exploring various opportunities to increase the market penetration of this packaging format and remain in active negotiations and bidding processes with large national customers and various other regional players across North America. Now, let's turn to specialty food on slide eight. In the fourth quarter, we continued our efforts to integrate our North America specialty food network. Summer Garden sales totaled $52 million in the quarter, down from $55.7 million last year, as we lapped a very strong quarter in 2024. The reduction also reflects, amongst other reasons, a change in third-party mix and the timing of certain promotions. During the quarter, Summer Garden encountered system recovery and restoration issues that led to non-recurring expenses and missed commercial opportunities, impacting their overall performance. The matter was addressed promptly, fully contained, not material to consolidated results, and with only residual impact in the ensuing period. Meanwhile, legacy operations delivered solid sales and profit growth driven by premium pasta sauces as well as in the soup category. As we sharpen our specialty food strategy to drive sustainable and profitable growth, We recently proceeded with key nominations to newly created positions that mark important steps in the evolution of the division, as you can see on slide nine. First, we appointed Jean-Philippe LeBlanc as president, North American Specialty Food Division. Throughout his career in the food and beverage industry, Jean-Philippe has distinguished himself through a deep commercial expertise and operational understanding of complex business environments. He brings a proven track record of leading sizable branded private label and third-party brand portfolios and of developing high-performance teams. We also named Jamie Bradford as Chief Marketing Officer, North American Specialty Food. Jamie has been with Lausanne for over a decade, most recently as VPN Eviction, North America. As CMO, she will focus on building new marketing capabilities for our specialty food brands to capture new distribution opportunities and accelerate innovation. With these appointments, the structure of our specialty food division now aligns with that of our beverage division, featuring a North America president, a chief marketing officer, and general managers overseeing private label and branded products. Now, before turning the meeting to Eric, let me highlight two additional key nominations to our corporate executive team. I am pleased to welcome Francis Trudeau, who joined us earlier this month as Executive Vice President of Finance. Francis brings more than 25 years of experience in corporate finance, mainly with dynamic, growth-oriented companies. We believe his leadership skills and proven background in strategic planning, corporate development, and operations will allow the SON to sustain profitable growth and achieve its long-term objectives. His nomination is part of a leadership transition that will culminate with Frances being appointed Chief Financial Officer on May 19th. This is a carefully planned phase transition. Eric and Frances are working closely to ensure full continuity in reporting discipline, capital allocation, and strategy execution. Finally, earlier this week, we were pleased to welcome Minh Quang Dong as Chief Information Officer With over 20 years of experience in technology, strategy, digital transformation, and enterprise modernization for prominent Canadian and international organizations, Min brings substantial expertise to Lausanne. In this new position, he will guide strategic vision for systems, infrastructure, data, and AI projects, ensuring strong cybersecurity and foster skills and innovation to support future growth. I will now turn the call over to Eric for a review of quarter four results.