Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Maple Leaf's second quarter 2022 financial results conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcast 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. We will go over the instructions for the question and answer session following the conclusion of the formal presentation. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mike Rall, Investor Relations at Maple Leaf Foods. Please go ahead, Mr. Rall.

Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. Speaking on the call this morning will be Michael McCain, Chief Executive Officer, Curtis Frank, Chief Operating Officer, and Geert Varellen, 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 second quarter 2022 MD&A and other information on our website for a broader description of operations and risk factors that could affect the company's performance. We have also uploaded our Q2 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 that you might have. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Michael McCain. Michael?

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Maple Leaf Foods' second quarter 2022 earnings call. So this past quarter is one of stark contrasts, incredibly chaotic operating environment, yet a very sound business that remains, in our view, structurally on target. When we spoke to you last in May, we told you that we expected a significant recovery in our second quarter meat segment margins. I do recall highlighting the caveat that our capacity to predict in this environment is dubious at best, But obviously this significant recovery did not come to pass. My goal this morning is to clearly and succinctly explain to you why and what we're doing about it. On a macro level, and I'm seeing this in almost every single sector of the economy, The post-pandemic economy is materially more challenging operationally than even during the pandemic itself. Of course, this is exacerbated by the conflict in Europe in our industry. But the core drivers of extreme labor instability, hyperinflation, and unstable agricultural markets has created an historically unprecedented situation that I've not seen in my 40 plus year career in this industry. It would be incorrect, incorrect to ascribe this to normal cycles of our or any other industry. While we've not seen stabilization yet, I personally do not see this environment being with us for long either. So let me be perfectly clear about the factors that impacted our meat protein results in the second quarter. We faced three core obstacles. People, pork, and pricing.