Saputo Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jeannie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Saputo, Inc. fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, Press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nick Estrella. You may begin.

Thank you, Jeannie. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter in fiscal 2024 earnings call. Our speakers today will be Lino Saputo, Chair of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Maxine Therrien, Chief Financial Officer and Secretary. For the question and answer session, Lino and Maxim will be supported by Karl Kulica, 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 will now hand it over to Lito.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Before we jump into our fiscal 2024 financial results, I'd like to comment on the recently announced leadership transition. Effective August 9th, I will be transitioning to the role of executive chair and Carl Kalitsa will become our president and CEO. This succession is the result of a careful and thoughtful planning process led by the board of directors to ensure a rigorous candidate review and seamless CEO transition. Carl joined the team in 1998 and has held key leadership positions in engineering, operations, business development, and strategy. He has served as president and COO of North America since 2019. Over the past 25 years, he has played an integral role in both building and executing our strategic vision. Carl and I have worked in close collaboration for many years, and I'm confident he is the ideal successor to lead Saputo for the next chapter. Carl's leadership style exemplifies our culture and values. He's passionate about the business and his collaborative approach and long-term vision inspires our team. I look forward to continuing to work closely with him and our strong leadership team as executive chair. While I move away from day to day, I'm excited with my new role, more focused on strategic oversight and continuing to promote the Saputo vision and values. Now, turning to our financial results. Fiscal 2024 was a year of resilience. Our financial performance throughout the year reflects our ability to stay the course in a dynamic macroeconomic environment, including commodity price volatility, a challenged consumer, and ongoing inflationary pressures. If you look past the market noise, our core business performed very well. Our teams remained focused on the elements within our control to accelerate growth once market dynamics begin to improve. Case in point, we generated over $1.1 billion of cash from operating activities, a testament to our diversified global platform. Fiscal 2024 was also a year of progress. Following three years of investments, and optimization of our global network, we completed the bulk of the capital projects under our global strategic plan. We are now ramping up commercial production at several facilities. We are leveraging the unique capacity and capabilities that will support organic growth. Our initiatives are already taking root and we're seeing positive results across the entire business. The investments we've made have delivered operational efficiencies, cost savings, plant productivity improvements, and enhanced margins. We have more operational stability and sustained improvements in customer fill rates. We've improved labor efficiencies and utilization in our plants. We are a more agile and collaborative business, and we have a long runway of opportunities in front of us. Over the balance of fiscal 2025 now underway, you will continue to see the results of our efforts. While I'm pleased with our performance, we still have more work ahead of us, and we're laser focused on achieving what we set out to do this year. Even though the work around the Global Strategic Plan has been at the forefront of much of our previous discussions, we have also been working behind the scenes to re-energize what we do best. invest in innovation, build our brands, and drive distribution gains across our categories around the world. Across our brands and products, both for food service and retail, we have a broad portfolio of offerings at a range of price points to meet consumers where they are. This is why our market position remains healthy, despite a more challenging macro environment where consumers are more cautious on their discretionary spending. In retail, we expect investments to ramp up as our teams activate our brand marketing, advertising, and innovation plans. In food service, we are focusing on providing solutions to operators seeking efficiencies and menu simplification. As we grow our business, we also want to play a key role in caring for our employees and the communities where we operate. In addition, we strive to mitigate our impact on the planet, working in partnership with farmers, suppliers, and other industry partners while offering products that contribute to a healthy lifestyle. These goals are integral to our business and guide our everyday actions. To update you on our progress, we issued our fiscal 2024 Saputo Promise Report yesterday. We're proud of what we've accomplished, yet recognize there is still a lot more to be done. I will now turn the call over to Max for the financial review before providing my concluding remarks.