Park Lawn Corporation

Greetings. Welcome to the Park One Corporation year-end 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Jennifer Haye, Chief Strategy Officer and General Counsel at Park Lawn. You may begin.

Thank you, Holly, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today's 2023 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. Before we begin our prepared commentary on the quarter, please note that you can find a detailed breakdown of our 2023 Fourth Quarter results in our financial statements and MD&A, which are available on our website and on CDAR+. Today's call is being recorded and a replay will be available after the call. Please be aware that certain information discussed today is forward-looking in nature. Any such information is subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, which could cause actual results to differ materially. Please see our public filings for more information regarding these forward-looking statements. During the call, we will reference non-IFRS financial measures. Although we believe these measures provide useful supplemental information about our financial performance, they are not recognized measures and do not have standardized meanings under IFRS. Please see our public filings for additional information regarding our non-IFRS financial measures, including for reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measures. I will now hand the call over to Parklawn CEO Brad Green to open our discussion today.

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. In addition to Jennifer, with me on the call today is our CFO, Dan Millett. I would like to start this morning by providing a brief overview of the 2023 fiscal year. Then Dan will provide some additional details around our performance in the quarter. And finally, I will finish with our 2024 financial outlook and what we expect to see over the coming year. This past year was a transformational year for Parkland. As we proceeded through the year working on various projects, The impact of everything coming together in the fourth quarter was probably even a bit of a surprise to the management team. While our attempt at a large and unfortunately well-publicized acquisition was unsuccessful, the insight gained by the organization in that process was highly valuable. And even with that going on in the background, we identified and closed on seven new businesses in line with our growth strategy, which included adding two new geographical markets, Iowa and Nebraska. More significantly, we divested 83 legacy businesses, which did not naturally align with Parklawn's portfolio or its continuing growth strategy. While this approximately $125 million of transaction activity included a large divestiture component, make no mistakes, those divestitures will have a meaningful impact on Parklawn moving forward. Additionally, during the year, we also restructured our sales leadership to decrease the geographic span of control and increase the ability to have a real local impact. That, along with an updated compensation plan, puts us in a position to take advantage of every opportunity available even during this depressed mortality period. Finally, we were able to refine our benchmark operating model based in large part on reliable, granular operating data from FACTS that had simply not existed in the past. With tools like monthly scorecards, benchmark achievement plans, daily contract status reports, discount cremation analysis, just to name a few, we're entering 2024 with a higher level of visibility in our operations and sales than we have ever had. Subsequent to year end, we continue to execute on our acquisition strategy, acquiring two new funeral homes and one cemetery on the western slope of Colorado. We are excited to have the Crippen family join Parklawn. And although the capital environment has been difficult over the past year, we believe that continuing to acquire premier operators that can be quickly integrated will provide near-term EPS accretions and longer-term value to the company. With that, I will turn the call over to Dan, who will provide details regarding our fourth quarter results. Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone.