Power Corporation of Canada

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Power Corporation third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Analysts who wish to join the question queue may press star then one on their telephone keypad. If at any point during the discussion you are having difficulty hearing, please press star then zero for operator assistance at any time. I would now like to remind you that this call is being recorded on Thursday, November the 13th, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Hung, Head of Investor Relations for Power Corporation. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter financial results call. Before we start, please note that a link to our live webcast and materials for this call have been posted to our website at powercorporation.com under the shareholder reports tab. Also, Power Corporation released a new financial supplementary package that can be found on our website as well. Please turn to slide two. I would like to draw your attention to the cautionary note regarding the use of forward-looking statements which form part of today's remarks. Please also refer to slide three for a note on the use on nine IFRS financial measures and clarifications on adjusted net asset value. To discuss our results today, joining us are President and CEO Jeffrey Orr and our EVP and CFO Jake Lawrence. We will begin with opening remarks followed by Q&A. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Okay, thank you, Steve, and welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning to discuss the results from the latest quarter. Very strong quarter for Power and the whole group, with three components really on display here. Strong earnings growth from the companies, value creation on evidence from our strategic investments, both at Power and at IGM, and then very strong cash flow and buildup of our cash positions. So all elements of what we're doing, I think, on clear display this quarter. From an earnings point of view, it was a very clean quarter. Obviously, it was good conditions, markets were strong, very positive environment in which we operate. But notwithstanding that, I think it demonstrated the earnings power of both Great West Life and IGM's earnings-driven businesses. And fundamentally, those businesses are growing. They're in good shape. They continue to build their businesses. But They also earn, and in a clean quarter, it was really demonstrating what kind of earnings power has been created there. On the value creation from the strategic investment side, as I said, both Power and IGM have portfolios of companies that are much higher growth and that are basically valued more on NAV than earnings. And in this quarter, two of those companies announced transactions the Wealthsimple and Rockefeller transactions that demonstrated not just the quality, but the magnitude of the value creation that can be created in that part of the portfolio. And finally, from a cash flow point of view, we've returned a lot of capital. That's an element of our strategy as well. And we stepped up our share repurchases on the back of a strong cash flow coming into the company, including from the Great West Life buyback, which we started to participate in. And notwithstanding the pickup and the buyback activity, the cash position of PowerCorp had quite a material jump over the quarter. So then I'll just flip forward to page seven and just talk a little bit about the two transactions that were announced this fall. So Rockefeller, as I think you're well aware, was an investment that was made, I think, in the spring of 2023, some nine quarters or so ago. In U.S. dollars, IGM invested $620 million, or $835 million, as you see at the bottom of the left-hand page there, in Canadian dollars. So Rockefeller welcomed a group of new shareholders into the capital stack, and those are all kind of prominent family investors. Moose is, in effect, the Chanel family. It is the Chanel company, basically, the Wertheimer family, and the Halbrons run Moose. That's their family office. Progeny is the Hemingway family from the west coast of the U.S. at Abrams Capital, sort of Boston. So they join... Viking and the Rockefeller family, and in effect, IGM, the Damerer family, if you want to put it from an ultimate control here. So you've got a group of prominent wealthy families that are in behind what's going on at Rockefeller, but a very significant jump in value is the main point here I want to make that you can see in the bottom of the page for IGM. And then while Simple continues to experienced tremendous growth. They crossed recently $100 billion in assets and continue to really grow their franchise, grow the number of clients. They're just succeeding on all fronts at this point. They had announced a very successful financing round that was led by GIC and Dragoneer, two obviously very credible investors, but also included some very other prominent investors that you can see at the bottom of the right-hand side there. And our group participated for 200 million, 100 each for power and IGM of the 550 treasury. And then once again, at the bottom right, you see the value creation. Power's got its own investment. And then across the group, including IGM principally, you can see the value pick up from just the last quarter. We had marked it up last quarter, but then this financing was done at an even higher mark. So nice to see... those two transactions validating the value creation that we see in our portfolio of strategic investments. Page eight, I won't really go through. It's just kind of a summary of financially how we've done. And with that, I'm going to pass the microphone over to David. Great. Thanks, Jeff.