Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Maple Leaf's first quarter 2025 financial results conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcast and recorded. All lights 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 Omar Javed. Investor Relations at Maple Leaf Foods. Please go ahead, Mr. Javed.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone.

Speaking on the call this morning will be Curtis Frank, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dave Smales, Chief Financial Officer, and Dennis Organ, President, Port Complex, and incoming CEO of Canada Packers. 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've discussed. Please refer to our first quarter 2025 MD&A and financial statements and other information on our website for a broader description of operations and risk factors that could affect the company's performance. We've also uploaded our first quarter investor presentation to our website. As always, the investor relations team will be available after the call for any follow-up questions you may have. With that, I'll turn the call over to our president and CEO, Curtis Frank. Okay, thank you, Omar, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you today to share our first quarter 2025 results. Joining me on the call today are David Snails, CFO of Maple Leaf Foods, and Dennis Organ, the president of our pork complex and incoming CEO of Canada Packers. I'll begin with a strategic and operational update, and then Dennis will speak to the port complex, and David will take us through a financial update. I will then step back in with a few closing remarks before we open the line for questions. The headline for today is that we are exiting Q1 with continued momentum on our side. In the first quarter, we made considerable progress towards achieving our goals for the year, reflected in accelerated sales growth, a significant increase in adjusted EBITDA, which grew by 50 million to 166 million, and an expanded EBITDA margin, which increased by 330 basis points to 13.4%. Alongside this strong financial performance, we have also made substantial strides in advancing our strategic transformation, guided by our refreshed Maple Leaf Blueprint, and inspired by our vision to be the most sustainable protein company on earth. In the first quarter, we delivered sales growth of 8.2% year-over-year, demonstrating robust performance across all our operating units, including prepared foods, poultry, and pork. Within our CCG-focused prepared foods and poultry business, strong top-line growth of 6.8% was driven by the solid execution of our proven growth strategies. We continue to be pleased with the resilience of our brands and with the incredible work our commercial teams are doing in the context of the current consumer demand environment. As an example to support our prepared foods business, we proudly launched our Look for the Leaf advertising campaign, spotlighting over 15 Canadian food brands in response to the growing by Canadians sentiment. This innovative campaign resonated with Canadians, achieving over 35 million impressions, and reaching 66% of Canadian grocery shoppers in its first 48 hours in market. In addition, our support behind the Mina Halal brand during Ramadan served to strengthen our cultural relevance and garnered brand affinity that contributed to the growth within our poultry business. We also continue to leverage our leadership in sustainable meats within the prepared food business, where our sustainable meats portfolio achieved yet another quarter of double-digit growth. The demand for our Greenfield brand, our sustainable meats premier offering, remains healthy in the U.S. market, driving volume growth and further enhancing our presence in the U.S. market as we continue to develop this established platform. As a leading protein-centric consumer packaged goods company, we remain focused on accelerating the pace and impact of our new product innovation. In response, we recently released our exciting spring innovation platform with 28 new items now in market and reaching retail grocery shelves. This follows the launch of more than 50 new items last year, including a new category adjacency with our Schneider's frozen breakfast portfolio, which continues to resonate well with consumers. While these efforts are contributing to our rise in sales, we also remain focused on expanding our adjusted EBITDA margins by executing on our operating plans. Our fuel for growth initiative, for example, which includes three elements, supply chain sourcing, SG&A optimization, and a strategic manufacturing review, is well advanced. First, as we discussed last quarter, we completed a procurement and sourcing project aimed at supply chain optimization toward the end of 2024. This is supporting enhanced savings, scalability, and agility in 2025. These benefits are already showing up in Q4 last year and here in the first quarter of this year. A second, we have successfully implemented the first phase of our SD&A optimization work, which included a restructuring of the commercial and operations parts of our organization. and the full integration of the plant protein business into the prepared foods operating unit. The benefits of improved execution and a leaner organizational structure are benefiting the first quarter and will be supportive to delivering our outlook for the year. And third, I'm happy to report that we are making good progress on our strategic manufacturing review, which is advancing through its analytical and development phase. We expect this initiative will be in the neighbor of our performance in years to come, so we are being methodical in our approach to ensure we prioritize the highest impact opportunities. The first step, the retirement of our aging Brantford facility and the transition of production to other manufacturing sites remains on track to be completed in Q2. Consistent with our strategic playbook and our work to reshape the portfolio to CPG, we continue to make great progress on the Canada Packers spin-off. As you would have seen from our press release on May 1st, the management information circular will be filed on May 12th, with the shareholder vote to be held on June 11th at our annual general meeting and special meeting. This spin-off is one of the most important and transformational strategic initiatives in Maple Leaf Foods' history, as we will create two strong independent companies each with enhanced strategic focus, distinct value propositions to unlock shareholder value, and more focused investments for shareholders. We strongly encourage all shareholders to vote in favor of the transaction and in support of the meaningful value it will create for all Maple Leaf stakeholders. You'll note from the pro forma LTM view provided today that we continue to deliver margin progression in both the Maple Leaf Foods CCG company and the future Tameka Packers Company. Next week, you will get even more visibility into the full details when we file our circular, something I know you are all keenly interested to dig into. Before I conclude my opening comments, I'd like to also turn your attention to a couple of important capital allocation updates. In January this year, we announced an increase to our quarterly dividends to $0.24 per share, or $0.96 per share annually, starting with the first declared quarterly dividend that was paid in March. This is the 10th consecutive year that we've increased our dividends, representing a compounded annual growth rate of 11.6% and a robust return for our shareholders. You would have also seen from our press release on March 11th that the Toronto Stock Exchange accepted the notice to establish a normal course issuer bid or NCID program. Under this program, Maple Leaf is authorized to purchase up to 7.3 million of its common shares over a 12-month period, representing just under 10% of the public's vote. The tool is intended to be used opportunistically to purchase shares when it is in the best interest of the company and represents an attractive use of available funds. So in this context, I'm hopeful that you share the same growing confidence that we have in the improving quality of our execution, and the growing momentum that we are building in our business. The team's collective hard work is being recognized by our shareholders and was reflected in a total shareholder return of over 24% in the first quarter. While this performance was ahead of our Canadian and U.S. peers, we firmly believe that there is tremendous value that remains yet to be recognized from Ipli Foods. Underpinned by the drivers I just discussed, we are fully on track to deliver against our 2025 outlook, which includes mid-single-digit revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA of $634 billion or better in 2025, investment-grade leverage to enable capital allocation choice, and a successful spinoff of Canada Packers. So with that, I'll now pass things over to Dennis to discuss support results, and then to Dave to review our financial results. Dennis?