Spark Power Group Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the SPARC Power Corporation investor call and webcast. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode and a question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation please click on the ask question box on the left side of your screen. Type in your question and hit submit. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host Mr. Richard Perry. Sir, you may proceed.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to our 2023 first quarter conference call. I am joined today by Spark Power's president and CEO, Richard Jackson. Rich will begin the morning with remarks on Q1 business highlights and a progress update on key strategic initiatives related to the rollout of our new three-year strategy. I will follow with a financial review of the first quarter, and then we will open up the call for Q&A. Before we commence the review, I would remind you that our presentation contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual results may differ materially. Further information identifying risks, uncertainties, and assumptions and additional information on certain non-IFRS measures referred to in this call can be found in disclosure documents filed by the company with the securities regulatory authorities and available on CDAR.com. Further, these forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call. Except as expressly required by applicable law, Spark Power assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. With that, I will turn the call over to SPARC's President and CEO, Rich Jackson, for his opening comments.

Thanks, Richard. Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to join us this morning. In Q1, we launched Let's Grow Better, our new three-year strategy for 2023 to 2025. This was launched throughout our organization. The first wave of initiatives had focused on the new go-to-market strategy as well as maturing Sparks US operations. This strategy is designed to drive intentional growth with the goal of creating sustainable and long-term value for shareholders as a fully integrated platform company. I'm very proud of those who took a lead in the strategy development and grateful for our employees who are working to bring this strategic mission to life. A main characteristic of our Let's Grow Better strategy is in fact growing better. This requires our company to become more targeted in our approach to the addressable market. As Spark transitions out of the founder entrepreneurial stage of growth as a platform company, we anticipate a heavy focus on revenue and margin quality and less growth for the sake of growth. This intentional approach will take time through the strategic cycle as we execute on refreshing the mix of business and the markets we serve. While we naturally see a path with market tailwinds providing for continued organic growth, We also anticipate our revenue growth to become more modest during the shift, while at the same time improving our gross margins and scaling of our ST&A costs. We have already begun to experience the shift in revenue mix in the business starting with a reduction in larger scale fixed price work augmented with more time and material and smaller work order sizes, more conducive to what we do as a local service provider in the space. We have experienced growth in our U.S. solar operations and maintenance, improved mix in our US technical services time and material work, and have made investments in our commercialization efforts to ensure we address the market by focusing on the sale of repeatable and reoccurring services. As part of the strategy, we have also emphasized the need to focus on the enablers to execute the strategic plan. These include strategic pillars of people and operational excellence. While much of the Let's Grow Better strategy is centered on our customers, the revised go-to-market and US market maturity We also recognized that our business needs to be enabled by people in operational rigor and discipline. As part of the operational excellence pillar, SPARC is focused on the completion of our enterprise-wide technology and one SPARC business process integration initiative, Project Darwin. In Q1, we successfully completed the second migration for the renewables U.S. operations, and now all U.S. operating companies have been moved onto one platform with standardized processes and operating protocols. We expect the new system will offer a better customer experience, operational efficiencies in the field and back office, and create a scalable platform that supports future growth. Our new strategy will take the newly established integrated platform, once fully implemented, to the next level by finessing the systems and processes through the strategic cycle, culminating in what I call the Spark way. Indeed, by the end of our strategic cycle, we expect to have our operational excellence pillar and the associated strategic work streams drive the longer term operational excellence for the organization for many years to come. Following the divestiture of Bullfrog Power in Q4 of last year, we have now completed the transition plan to decouple and migrate the IT systems to the buyer, as well as back office support as part of a transition services agreement. I am proud to say that this work was substantially completed by the end of the quarter. I also want to acknowledge the work done with our lender to revisit our amended and restated credit facility signed on November 30th, 2022 to revise the financial covenants. The bank has been a strong supporter of our business and we have executed our growth strategy managed through various macroeconomic and social factors over the last several years in particular. Richard will provide more details in his financial update. I am proud and excited about the progress being made and the talented team we have in place. We have achieved some noteworthy milestones in relation to our Let's Grow Better strategy and our focus on pursuing more profitable growth opportunities. This, coupled with our growth margin expansion in our core business lines, sets the stage for an improvement in EBITDA margins. I am confident we are set to grow profitably and sustainably. And just as important, our team will continue to drive improvements in working capital management with targets for reduction and pushing our efforts to speed up our cash cycle, driving better liquidity and free cash flow conversion. Lastly, I want to commend our operating teams and our health and safety organization for their continued focus on the safety of our team members. We continue to improve our safety performance across the portfolio with further enhancements to our safety tools, leadership and training as we drive our zero incident safety culture. I will now turn the call back over to Richard to share our Q1 financial results. Richard. Thank you, Richard.