Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Maple Leaf's first quarter 2023 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 remark. 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, Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Curtis Frank, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Hir Torrelin, 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 2023 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 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 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. Over my 45 years in the food business, I've endured some pretty stormy and challenging conditions. It's always astonishing to me how timeless the phrase it's always darkest before the dawn is so commonly true. You'll know that we've been expecting a difficult quarter for Maple Leaf beginning in 2023. It's widely recognized that the post-pandemic economy has been difficult for our industry, highlighted mostly by what can only be described as dislocated pork markets, which are by all measures unprecedented. Yet as these conditions persist, our understanding of them, how we navigate them, and our confidence that they won't be with us for long grows by the day. Here's the high level summary as I see it in the moment. Number one, the post-pandemic supply chain disruption, while still a factor in Q1, as we indicated previously, is now behind us. That's very good news. Our people complement is now at normal levels, and this stability is showing up in the normalization of factory performance and customer service into the second quarter. Number two, we are executing what we hope and what we believe will be our last hyperinflation pricing initiative in the second quarter. And the performance of our brands, stable throughout this, has been exceptional, which we feel is an outstanding long-term health indicator. And to us, this is totally green light. Number three, clearly, as you can see in our One profit in the pig historical market spread chart in the deck that was circulated. The pork market dislocation persists. What you see, however, are green shoots, or what we see, however, are green shoots of change that are occurring almost weekly now. We're now shipping into China from Brandon, indicative mostly of overall Chinese demand changes. that is accelerating. The European supply is materially contracting, and they've been the largest supplier to China. U.S. exports are accelerating. Margins in Japan are improving, albeit slowly. And there are examples of supply contraction on many, many levels throughout North America. We believe that this dislocation will change as Newton's law of for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction is alive and well in all agriculture. Fourth, we've made further progress in the first quarter and we're on track for the balance of this year to achieve our milestone of adjusted EBITDA neutral or better in plant protein. I would remind you this is a milestone only, as our objective is for the plant protein business to be highly profitable, like the balance of all of our categories. And we'll get there in plant protein as well. And finally, and critically, our new plant startups are going exceptionally well. As a reminder, we have over $1 billion in brand new assets that are all currently in startup mode. Not contributing one penny today, but once complete in the next few months, we'll be generating roughly $130 million new adjusted EBITDA to our business. Some of you visited London Poultry recently and you saw firsthand what the facility We'll do. It's a world-class plant and operating very well given its stage and ramp up with an amazing and experienced team. We're now fully on one single shift of production in that plant on frac for the second shift over the next six months with all legacy plants then shut down. Positively, the bacon facility in Winnipeg is now operating ahead of business case design parameters, and the only remaining task is onboarding the new volume into that plant. Notably, the quality of product leaving all of these new facilities has been outstanding. Here's what I now feel with great confidence. Great confidence. When two things occur, the pork market's normalized, and our new plants complete startup. I repeat, when the pork markets normalize and our new plants complete startup, we will be structurally performing at adjusted EBITDA margin levels at the high end or above our strategic target of 14 to 16%. I believe that we've provided all of the facts, the insights, and the data for you to arrive at that conclusion as well. This is clearly an inflection year, and our confidence is growing. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Curtis Frank. Curtis?