Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Maple Leaf Foods' fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being webcast and recorded. Please note that there will be a question and answer session following the formal remarks. Instructions for participating in the Q&A will be provided following the conclusion of the formal presentation. I would now like to turn the conference over to Omar Javed, Vice President of Investor Relations at Maple Leaf Foods. Please go ahead, Mr. Javed.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that 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 fourth quarter and full year 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 fourth quarter and full year 2025 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. Thank you for being with us here on our call today. Joining me this morning is our Chief Financial Officer, David Smales. After my opening remarks, Dave will walk through our financial results in a bit more detail, and then I'll come back to close the call, and of course, we will open the line to your questions. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of our stakeholders for their continued support throughout our transformational journey. I also want to thank and acknowledge the Maple Leaf team for their dedication to delivering on our strategic blueprint with nothing short of excellence. The headline for today is that we have reached a clear inflection point. The heavy investment phase is behind us. We are now firmly in a delivery and return phase where our team is executing with focus, with discipline, and with care. We delivered a strong fourth quarter that capped off a year of significant financial progress in 2025. We delivered on our commitments, and we have strengthened the business in meaningful and durable ways. Most importantly, we are now seeing the tangible benefits of our transformation into a purpose-driven, protein-centric, and brand-led CPG company following the Canada Packers spinoff. Strong execution, brand leadership and the returns from our strategic investments are driving sustained growth, margin expansion, improving consistency and are positioning us for long-term value creation. We entered 2026 with operational momentum, a strong and healthy balance sheet and a sharper strategic focus. Our identity and our priorities are clearer than ever. Let's begin today with unpacking our fourth quarter performance, a quarter of continued momentum and top line growth, and growing adjusted EBITDA. We are executing against our five core growth platforms, which have proven resilient through difficult market conditions, leveraging our leadership in sustainable meats, investing in our portfolio of leading brands to grow consumer demand and loyalty, accelerating the pace of impactful innovation, expanding our geographic reach into the U.S. market, and embedding Maple Leaf's unique and differentiated capabilities into our customer strategies. As a result, sales were $991 million in Q4, up 8.1% year-over-year, outpacing North American CPG and our competitive peer set. Performance in Q4 showed strength across both of our operating units. Prepared foods grew 6.1%, driven by pricing and improved mix. We increased our Canadian branded market share in the quarter and branded volumes grew, a clear sign of competitive strength. Poultry sales grew 13.1% in the quarter, driven by improved channel mix and volume growth across both retail and food service. Value-added poultry remains a structural growth engine with London Poultry, enabling sustainable mix improvements, and our sustainable meats business performed strongly, including double-digit growth in our prime raised growth out antibiotics brand, helping us to expand our branded market share in the fresh poultry category this past quarter. Turning to profitability, adjusted EBITDA was $117.3 million, up 8.3%, with a margin of 11.8% in line with last year, and an improvement sequentially from 11.1% in Q3. Input cost inflation in prepared foods remained elevated as we had anticipated. And while pricing actions have not yet fully recovered the inflation experienced by year end, the path forward is clear, and our team is focused on executing the actions within our control. We implemented an inflation-based pass-through price increase in mid to late February, which we expect will support the delivery of our outlook for this year. Apart from our financial performance, we also successfully navigated a major transformation. The spinoff of our pork operations into Canada Packers at the start of Q4 was one of the most significant portfolio transformation in our company's history. With this separation now complete, Maple Leaf Foods now operates as a protein-focused CPG, with a clear vision to be the most sustainable protein company on Earth. Our ongoing relationship with Canada Packers, including a 16% ownership stake and an evergreen supply agreement securing high-quality, sustainably raised pork, is functioning as designed. The focus gained through this separation allows us to concentrate resources on what we do best, build love and trust, innovate with discipline, and operate an efficient, resilient supply chain at scale. Turning to the full year, while 2025 was certainly not without its challenges, we are pleased with the meaningful progress we delivered against our commitments. First, we committed to and delivered strong revenue growth. Sales were $3.9 billion for the full year, up 7.7%, reflecting industry-leading performance driven by our proven growth platforms, leading in sustainable meats, brand investment, innovation, U.S. expansion, deeper customer integration, and continued support from structural demand for protein. We launched more than 50 impactful innovations, including two new brands, Musafir and Mighty Protein, both of which are tracking to plan. Our brand presence extended beyond the shelf, including the Look for the Leaf campaign, our partnership with Schneiders and the Toronto Blue Jays, and our latest Team Canada Olympic program, which I will return to shortly. Second, we had committed to and delivered adjusted EBITDA growth and expanded our structural margin. Here, too, we showed significant progress in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA was $476 million, up 21%, and adjusted EBITDA margins expanded 140 basis points to 12.2%. We delivered 83 million of EBITDA growth through improved mix, operating efficiency, capital project benefits, and our fuel for growth initiative. Third, we had committed to strengthening the balance sheet. We reduced leverage to 2.1 times a year end, firmly within our investment grade range, while maintaining discipline in capital expenditures. This balance sheet strength enabled enhanced shareholder returns. We increased the annual dividend by 9%, repurchased approximately 700,000 shares under the NCIB, and paid a 60 cents per share dividend, totaling approximately $75 million. That special dividend marked a clear transition from deleveraging to a balanced investor-friendly focused capital allocation strategy, supporting both growth investment and shareholder returns. To put a fine point on it, disciplined execution defined 2025, and that same discipline will guide us through 2026. Our priorities for 2026 are clear. First, to continue to scale the core business, driving sustainable volume and revenue growth through our proven growth platforms. Second, to expand our structural margins, growing profit faster than sales through mix improvement, productivity, and structural cost reduction, as well as pricing to recover the inflationary impacts we felt in the back half of 2025. And third, to continue to demonstrate smart and disciplined capital allocation, acting as prudent stewards of capital, and prioritizing long-term value creation. In January, we provided our 2026 outlook, reflecting confidence in sustaining our operational momentum and strategic focus. To recap, our 2026 outlook is as follows. We expect mid-single-digit revenue growth from 2025. We expect adjusted EBITDA of approximately $520 to $540 million, driven by revenue growth and margin improvement. We expect to maintain leverage below three times, supported by strong free cash flow and prudent capital allocation. We expect capital investments of approximately 160 to 180 million, focused on maintenance and productivity. We expect annual dividend growth of approximately 10%, based on an increase in the quarterly dividend from 19 cents to 21 cents per share, marking the 11th consecutive year of an annual dividend increase, and we intend to file a notice of intention with the TSX to renew the NCIB in Q1 of 2026. All to say we remain highly optimistic about our future, and at our investor day next week on March 10th, we will provide deeper insight into our strategic blueprint, our execution playbook, and showcase the strength of our leadership team that will drive long-term value creation across our business. Before I conclude, I want to come back to the Team Canada Olympic Partnership, which embodied our spirit of competition. As Team Canada's official protein partner, which started last month at Milano Cortino for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, and will continue through the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Summer Games, We are aligning our protein brands with the foundation of everyday performance, whether the day starts at work, at school, or in training. The program is showcasing Maple Leaf, Maple Leaf Prime, Maple Leaf Natural Selections, and Maple Leaf Mighty Protein in partnerships with Team Canada athletes, serving as yet another example of strengthening our consumer connection at scale while connecting the Maple Leaf brand to moments where Canadians come together. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dave to walk you through some additional financial context. Dave?