Velan Inc.

Bonjour et bienvenue à la conférence téléphonique sur les résultats financiers du deuxième trimestre de l'année fiscale 2024 de Vélan, Inc. Greetings and welcome to the Vélan, Inc. Q2 of Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. Pendant la présentation, nous participons sur un mode d'écoute seulement. Une période de questions suivra la présentation. Si vous citez de poser une question, appuyez sur le 1, sur le 4, sur le téléphone. The presentation of participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we'll conduct a question-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 by the 4 on your telephone. Si lors de la conférence, vous avez besoin de parler à un téléphoniste, s'il vous plaît, appuyez sur le 3, sur le 0. If any time the conference should reach an operator, you may press the start or by the 0. We remind you that today's teleconference will be held on Friday, October 6, 2023. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Friday, October 6, 2023. I now give the floor to Rishi Sharma, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the conference over now to Rishi Sharma, Chief Financial Officer. The floor is yours. Please go right ahead.

Thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call. Let's start by discussing the disclaimer from our investor relations presentation, which is now available on our website in the investor relations section. As always, the first section mentions that the presentation provides an analysis of our consolidated results for the quarter ended August 31st, 2023. The board of directors approved these results yesterday, October 5th, 2023. The second paragraph refers to non-IFRS and supplementary financial measures, which are defined and reconciled at the end of this presentation. Finally, the last paragraph refers to forward-looking information, which are subject to risks and uncertainty and are not guaranteed. The forward-looking statements contained in this presentation are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. I will now pass it over to Bruno Carbonaro, CEO of Vela.

Thanks, Rishi, and hello, everyone. So now we'll record our 10 highlights for the second quarter of our fiscal year 2024. First of all, we report sales of 80.3 million, which is an improvement of about 20% versus the Q1 of the year, and a mild decrease of 4.7 million, or 5.6%. That is the second quarter of last year. It translated to a 3 million EBITDA, which is 1.6 million reported on the second quarter of last fiscal year. Most of the explanation is due to the changed way we account for our asbestos liability. But we need to notice that with $5 million less revenue than one year before, we can report about the same data when normalized for the antitrust cost, which means that we were serious about maintaining our margin at high level. This translates into a $2.1 million net loss for the border. We were able also to maintain our backlog at a higher level at 485.7 million. It's an increase since the beginning of the year of 21.3 million, partially explained by the revision of the foreign exchange between Europe and Denmark. We enjoyed a very nice cash position on our balance sheet. We have a very robust balance sheet. We have a net cash position of $39.4 million at the end of the quarter, despite a decrease of $19.3 million during the quarter due to the preparation for the budgeted ramp-up of our operations in Q3 and Q4 of the year. Last but not least, I wanted to share with you the fact that as a result of Folsom not obtaining the required regulatory approvals for France related to the acquisition of Vellan, they have informed the company that they intend to terminate the arrangement agreement on October 7th this year. I now pass on back the mic to Rishi to navigate you on some specifics of the board.