Secure Waste Infrastructure Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Secure Energy Q4 2022 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. And if at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also note that this call is being recorded on Thursday, March 2, 2023. And I would like to turn the conference over to Alison Prokop. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sylvie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Curious Conference call for the fourth quarter and year-end 2022. Joining me on the call today is Rani Amaro, our Chief Executive Officer, Alan Grant, our President, and Chad Magus, our Chief Financial Officer. During the call today, we will be making forward-looking statements related to future performance, and we will refer to certain financial measures and ratios that do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by GAAP and may not be comparable to similar financial measures or ratios disclosed by other companies. The forward-looking statements reflect the current views of SECURE with respect to future events and are based on certain key expectations and assumptions considered reasonable by SECURE. Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and actual results could differ material from those anticipated due to numerous factors and risks. Please refer to our continuous disclosure documents available on CEDAR as they identify risk factors applicable to SECURE Factors which may cause results differ materially from any forward-looking statements and identify and define our non-GAAP measures. Today, we will review our financial and operational results for the fourth quarter in 2022 year, followed by our outlook for 2023. I'll now turn the call over to Rennie for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Alison, and good morning, everyone. We are very proud of what we were able to accomplish during 2022. It was a record year for the corporation, both operationally and financially, and we successfully executed on all our short-term objectives established along the Torita merger, which closed midway through 2021. Thanks to our exceptional employees who embraced the one team mindset and worked together, we were able to exceed our objectives in realizing the 75 million cumulative in synergies, integrating the acquired business units and paying down debt while continuing to provide best-in-class customer service. In 2022, we handled record volumes across our critical infrastructure network, helping our customers to cost-effectively manage their environmental liabilities. Our facilities shipped, on average, over 129,000 barrels of oil every day and processed 136,000 barrels of produced water per day in 2022. Through our processes, we were able to recover over 1.6 million barrels of oil from customer waste At our 18 industrial landfills, we safely disposed of 4.6 million tons of contaminated solid waste. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 44% over pro forma 2021 to 557 million. The increase was a factor of stronger industry fundamentals, driving increased volumes to our facilities, as well as integration cost savings achieved as a result of the Turgida merger. We converted 62% of adjusted EBITDA to generate discretionary free cash flow of $348 million, which we primarily directed towards the repayment of debt, resulting in a reduction of our total debt to EBITDA ratio to 1.9x at December 31st, 2022. With the success in the business and a stronger financial position after paying down $308 million of debt in 2022, We're pleased to pay an increased quarterly dividend of $0.10 per common share in January of 2023, a 13 times increase over a previous dividend payment. We've also been active on our normal course issuer bid implemented at the end of last year. To date, we have repurchased nearly 6 million common shares at an average price of $7.78 per share for a total spend of $46 million. We continue to progress our commitments to ESG We're currently working on our annual sustainability report in our inaugural climate-related disclosure report for 2022, which sets out our expected governance strategy, risk management metrics, and targets as they relate to climate impact. We look forward to sharing these with you in May of 2023. In January, we were pleased to appoint Mick Dilger to the board of directors and as chairman of the board. Mick was formerly CEO and director of Hemant Pipeline Corporation from 2014 to 2021, creating tremendous shareholder value during this time. Chad will now go through the financial highlights in the fourth quarter of 2022.