Superior Plus Corp.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Superior Plus 2021 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. Should you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, the VP of Capital Markets, Rob Doran. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lateef. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Superior Plus' conference call and webcast to review our 2021 annual and fourth quarter results. Our speakers on the call today will be Luc Desjardins, President and CEO, and Beth Summers, Executive VP and CFO. Darren Rebar, Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer, is also joining today's call. Today's call is being webcast and we encourage listeners to follow along with the supporting presentation, which is also available on our website. For this morning's call, Luke and Beth will begin with their prepared remarks and then we will open up the call for questions. Before I turn the call to Luke, I'd like to remind you that some of the comments made today may be forward-looking in nature and are based on Superior's current expectations, estimates, judgments, projections, and risks. Further, some of the information provided refers to non-GAAP measures. Please refer to Superior's annual MD&A posted on CDAR and Superior's website yesterday for further details on forward-looking information and non-GAAP measures. I would encourage listeners to review the MD&A as it includes more detail on the financial information for 2021 and the fourth quarter. as we won't be going over each financial metric on today's call. This will allow us to move more quickly into the question and answer period. I'll now turn the call over to Luke.

Well, thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. Firstly, I'd like to thank the entire Superior Plus team for delivering a solid year despite the challenges we face from COVID-19 pandemic and warm weather in December. I'm proud of our team commitment to safety and reliability as we continue to deliver propane and provide best-in-class service to our customers in the U.S. and in Canada. In 2021, our adjusted bid was $298 million, which was within our 2021 adjusted bid guidance range. Our fourth quarter adjusted bid of $142 million was modestly below the prior year. In the fourth quarter, our business was negatively impacted by warm weather especially in December, in our U.S. operating region, December was 15% warmer than December 2020 and 12% warmer than the five-year average. So we never like when the weather is not on our side, and quarter to quarter, very difficult to have a normal flat line. But the good part of this situation, if you look at quarter one this year, we started the year extremely well in the weather, as all of you know, has been on our side for the starting of this new year. We're very pleased about that. So it balances out over a period of time. In the fourth quarter, we made two additional acquisitions in Michigan and North Carolina. We're making good progress on the Superior Way Forward plan initiative focused on growth through acquisition, continuous improvement, and organic growth. In 2021, we completed seven acquisitions for approximately $325 million. Our acquisition of Camp Propane, which is expected to close early in the second quarter, for total consideration of approximately $300 million, will have a good platform for California Western U.S. footprint, where well over 30% of our $1.9 billion target will communicate as part of a superior way forward to reach that amount by 2026. We also have a robust pipeline of acquisition. We expect acquisition in the range of $2 to $300 million in 2022. Our 2022 adjusted bidder guidance does not include any contribution from additional acquisition except camp, assuming a close in early quarter two, which doesn't reflect quarter one, as you all know. For camp, it's $17 to $20 million of estimated adjusted bidder historically generate in the first quarter. So we won't have that in the result for 2022. It will be in 2023. The first quarter typically generates the highest EBITDA, usually between 45% to 60% of the annual EBITDA, depending on business and geographic region. In January, we also announced a collaboration with Charbon Corporation to deliver green hydrogen to commercial and industrial customers in Quebec. This is an exciting opportunity for Superior and aligned with our strategy to be one of the leading distributors of mobile low-carbon energy in North America. We're working on other opportunities in the renewable and low-carbon space, and I look forward to sharing details of those opportunities as they unfold in 2022-2023. Now I'll turn the call over to Beth to discuss financial results in our 2022 guidance. Beth, up to you.