Superior Plus Corp.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Superior Plus 2022 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Rob Doran, Vice President of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Catherine. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Superior Plus' conference call and webcast to review our 2022 third quarter results. On the call today from Superior Plus are Luc Desjardins, President and CEO, and Beth Summers, Executive VP and CFO. For this morning's call, Luc and Beth will begin with their prepared remarks, and then we will open up the call for questions. Listeners are reminded 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 continuous disclosure documents available on CDAR and Superior's website yesterday for further details. Dollar amounts discussed on today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to Luke.

Thank you Rob and good morning everyone. for joining the call to discuss our third quarter results. I'm pleased to say quarter three results are in line with management expectations and we're maintaining our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance range. It's important to know that quarter three is the seasonally slowest quarter for our business due to the lower heating load of this quarter. In particular, was negatively impacted by the timing of acquisition complete in the past nine months. We've acquired two pretty good-sized enterprises, and we incur all the costs associated with the acquired businesses, but the volumes are lower due to the lack of demand in the summertime, and we have not yet had the timing to achieve all the associated synergies, which are coming in the next 18 months. Our Canadian business was also negatively impacted by warmer weather, especially in Western Canada, as well as the lack of Canadian emergency wage subsidies. of third quarter 2022. So basically, I think there is an opportunity for everyone to understand that quarter three is so low in volume, and we made those two acquisitions not a year ago, but not having the chance to have all the EBITDA that comes in quarter four and quarter one, which are going to be coming in the next two quarters. So there is a disconnect there, no surprise to us, With our partners' business at the right price, the Synergy are tracking a bit ahead of time because we start to work on it this summer, and there is absolutely no surprise for us of this situation in quarter three. As with our two-year date result in quarter four 2022, we're comfortable in our ability to manage the impact of inflationary pressure on our business to increase price and cost-saving initiatives. We saw the benefit of acquisition completed over the last year to higher volume quarter over quarter. However, as I mentioned, we also saw higher operating expense in the quarter. Our focus on being a perfectly energy distributor means that our third quarter results would emphasize the seasonality of the industry we operate in, especially in the U.S. propane distribution segment, which has mainly residential customer whose consumption is dictated by eating degree day, which are very low in July to September. We're making great progress in the Superior Way Forward EBITDA growth initiative through acquisition, continuous improvement, and organic growth. During the quarter, we'll make great progress on the integration of a qualt and camp acquisition ahead of the eating season, which will set up very well for synergy realization going forward. We also closed three small acquisitions since our last update in quarter two, one in California, one in North Carolina, and one in Ontario, Canada. For a total consideration of $29.9 million, with these three acquisitions, we have achieved a low end of our 22 acquisition target, range of $200 to $300 million in enterprise value, excluding CAATS acquisitions. We continue to demonstrate our commitment to our dynamic capital allocation approach through our commencement of a normal post-issue bid in October 13, providing us with another level lever through which to return capital to shareholders. This does not mean we're no longer evaluating M&A targets. We will do acquisition, but we may also repurchase shares if that opportunity generates the appropriate return. We're focused on creating long-term shareholder value and we will only allocate capital to our most accretive opportunities. I'll now turn the call over to Beth to discuss the financial results in more detail.