Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Maple Leaf's first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcasted live on the internet and recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that there will be a question and answer session following the formal remarks, and we will go over the question and answer session instructions following the conclusion of the formal presentation. I would now like to turn the conference call over to James Allison, Investor Relations at Maple Leaf. Please go ahead, Mr. Allison.

Thank you, Joanna, and good morning, everyone. Speaking on the call this morning will be Michael McCain, Chief Executive Officer, Curtis Frank, Chief Operating Officer, and Gert Varelin, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some statements made on today's call may constitute forward-looking information and our future results may differ materially from what we discuss. Please refer to our Q1 2021 NDNA and other information on our website for a broader description of operations and risk factors that could affect the company's performance. We have uploaded our Q1 investor deck to our website, which includes support material for the quarter. As always, the investor relations team will be available after the call for any follow-up questions or any detailed modeling questions you might have. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Michael McCain. Michael?

Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm joined today by Curtis Frank and Herd Forellen. As we cross the one-year mark of COVID-19 in North America, I'm heartened by our ability to keep our people safe and continue to supply our customers with minimal disruption. This is a testament to our people who transitioned almost seamlessly to online work and our frontline staff who operate our facilities. We've taken extraordinary measures to safeguard them, most recently through rolling out on-site vaccination. We've maintained constant diligence and adherence throughout this to our protocols and commitment to putting our people first. Turning to our business, we are balancing some near-term performance while advancing our vision to lead in sustainable protein. We continue to deliver profitable growth in our meat protein business, and we are investing for growth in our plant protein business. We positioned our brands and our products to fuel this growth, including being leaders in two high-growth categories, sustainable meat and plant proteins. We've grown them at a 25% compound growth rate, and these two categories now represent over 20% of our portfolio. It's important to note that over the past three fiscal years, we've grown our meat protein adjusted EBITDA by 53%, and we've grown in that same three-year period a plant protein business top line sales by 52%. These are remarkable achievements, and I'm incredibly proud of the results so far. This quarter, we continued to make progress. We delivered top-line growth in the meat protein business of over 3% in the quarter, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.2%. We're steadily and confidently moving towards our 2022 target of 14 to 16%. Short-term results of our plant protein business were soft starting out this year with sales growth below our strategic target. Curtis is going to unpack that later in the call. We expect to see a material improvement as the year progresses following the abatement of COVID-19 restrictions. Most importantly, though, we have unwavering confidence in the potential of this business and the investments that we're making in plant proteins. We've built our organizational structure, invested in brands, brand strategies, and product innovation, and we've made strategic investments to strengthen our manufacturing base. We have a strong number two market share, and we're well positioned for growth. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Curtis, who's going to review the operations, and here, too, we'll cover the financials. Curtis, over to you.