Saputo Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Saputo, Inc. fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2023 results conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in the listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Friday, June 9th, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nick. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Frank. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2023 earnings call. Our speakers today will be Lino Saputo, Chair of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Maxime Therrien, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary. For the question and answer session, Lino and Maxim will be supported by Carl Kalitsa, President and Chief Operating Officer, North America, and Leanne Cutts, President and Chief Operating Officer, International and Europe. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this webcast and conference call are being recorded, and the webcast will be posted on our website along with the fourth quarter investor presentation. Please also note that some of the statements provided during this call are forward-looking. Such statements are based on assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. We refer to our cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information in our annual reports, press releases, and filings. Please treat any forward-looking information with caution, as our actual results could differ materially. We do not accept any obligation to update this information, except as required under securities legislation. I'll now hand it over to Lino.

Well, thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by saying our hard work and determination have certainly paid off. Fiscal 2023 reflected a strong turnaround and a return to growth for our business as we delivered record revenue and a significant increase in adjusted EBITDA compared to last year. We also generated over a billion dollars of cash from operating activities, a testament to our diversified global platform. We achieved this. while navigating a difficult and volatile environment with ongoing inflation and supply chain disruptions, mindful of the many challenges facing our consumers but never losing sight of the future and our strategic agenda. Our U.S. sector led the way with higher year-over-year adjusted EBITDA and margin recovery, while our Canada and international sectors delivered consistent, strong results throughout the year. We made progress against many of our key priorities, including cost and margin recovery. And on the labor front, we benefited from improved employee onboarding, training, and retention, which have positively impacted our service levels. We saw strong underlying demand from consumers and pricing elasticities, despite ongoing elevated levels of inflation. We capitalized on this strong demand with better supply chain performance, enabling us to recover from a challenging fiscal 2022. With customers and consumers as value conscious as ever, we leveraged our diverse portfolio across multiple market segments, brands, and price points. In addition, we took actions across each of our sectors to drive volume growth with investments in innovation to enhance our value added portfolio. This included strengthening the category-leading brands in the U.S., such as Frigo, Frigo Cheeseheads, Monchev, and Stella through new flavor introductions. In Canada, we further grew our Armstrong cheese portfolio with an expanded assortment in addition to new offerings and formats in Cathedral City, supported by a refreshed marketing campaign. We leveraged our strong momentum in the growing everyday cheese snacking categories by launching innovations in string cheese, flavored snacking curds, and combo packs. Finally, we made considerable progress on our journey to build category-leading and plant-based cheeses portfolio with several launches across leading brands such as Cathedral City, Vitalite, Cheese, and Cheer. These investments in research, product development, and innovation continue to be recognized by consumers and leading grocery associations and reaffirm our ability to bring innovative products to market in support of our overall growth strategy. As you're aware, we have an ambitious growth plan which is expected to simplify and strengthen our manufacturing footprint, further reduce complexities, streamline our operating model, and unlock new growth opportunities. This past year, we continue to execute against this plan. We announced several capital investments and consolidation initiatives across our global platforms. We took some tough decisions across each of our sectors to optimize our network. We're investing in new capacity and capabilities. We're accelerating efforts to modernize our operations, and we're repurposing capacity in areas in which we have the highest demand. As we aim to reach our adjusted EBITDA target, we are beginning to hit our stride with significant potential expected to be realized over the next two years and beyond. While our target remains unchanged, we have updated some elements of the plan to reflect the changing global macro environment. For example, at the operational level, our plan now allows for more opportunities around network optimization versus at the plan's inception. There's still more work to be done, but with the foundation that has been laid, I'm very optimistic for what the future holds for us, even if we hit a few bumps along the way. Near term, we will focus on execution and accelerating growth, particularly as the operating environment further stabilizes. We will then transition to harvesting investments and driving operating leverage to unlock the full earnings potential of our global strategic plan. We will continue to manage a range of risks across the business, including a very tight labor market and persistent inflationary cost pressures with the volatility in commodities remaining a big wild card. As we grow our business, we will also want to play a key role in caring for and supporting our employees and the communities where we operate. In addition, we strive to mitigate our impact on the planet working in partnership with our farmers, our suppliers, and other industry partners while offering products that are part of a healthy lifestyle. These goals are integral to our business and guide our everyday actions. To update you on our progress areas in the Saputo Promise, we will have a release in the month of August. We're proud of what we've accomplished thus far. but recognize there is still opportunity ahead, and we strive to act collectively with our key stakeholders to drive progress towards our ESG goals. I will now turn the call over to Max for the financial review before looking back at Q4 results and providing my concluding remarks. Max?