WildBrain Ltd.

Hello and welcome to Wildbrain's fiscal 2022 Q4 and full year earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any back or noise. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during that time, please press the star then one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star two. I'd now like to turn the call over to Nancy Chan-Palmatier, Director, Investor Relations at Wildbrain. You may begin the conference.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Speaking on the call today are Alex Aaron-Bolden, our CEO, and Aaron Ames, our CFO. Also with us today and available on the Q&A are Josh Sherbrock, President, as well as Dana Leith, our MDT of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer. And I'm Kathleen Persaud. The new EVP of Investor Relations and our outgoing director of IR, Nancy, is on as well. First, we have some standard cautionary statements. The matters discussed in this call include forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws with respect to WildBrain, including that limited to statements regarding investments inside the company, commercial arrangements of the company, and the business strategies and operational objectives and financial and operating performance of the company and the value of the assets. Such statements are based on factors and assumptions that management believes are reasonable and at the time were made and information currently available. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results or events in the future could materially differ universally from those described in the forward-looking statements as a result of important factors. including the risk factors set out in the Transnational Discretion of MDMA and annual information form. Please note that all currency numbers are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. For the question and answer session that follows, we ask that each analyst give to one question and one follow-up. If you'd like to ask an additional question, please rejoin the queue. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Eric.

Good morning. Thank you, Kathleen, and thank you all for joining us today. Fiscal 22 was yet another successful year for Wild Brain as we continue to execute on the strategy that we put in place starting in 2019. Our focus on the 360-degree platform for the end-to-end reactivation of beloved entertainment brands from our deep vault of IP led us to return to growth in 2021, and that trend has accelerated in 2022. And over the last three years, we've deliberately built the resources and teams needed to create and integrate this unique 360-degree platform. I believe we are the only independent kids and family entertainment company with a fully integrated suite of in-house capabilities that span production, distribution, digital media, and consumer products licensing. And our global reach and our ability to leverage IP across this platform positions us as truly unique and valuable in today's media landscape. Erin is going to give you the details on our results, but I'd first like to take a few minutes regarding the highlights of the year. We generated growth in revenue and EBITDA for the second year running. We have an incredibly strong content pipeline, an unparalleled executive team, We're building earnings and growth momentum as we bring more and more of our branded IP to market. We line up more consumer products opportunities in the coming years. In content production and distribution, we continue to reactivate treasure brands from our evergreen library. And just recently, we announced that Peacock has commissioned 52 brand new 11-minute CG animated episodes of Caillou for the U.S. market. and they're picking up as well five new CG specials for the brand. This deal followed last year's announcement that Cartoon Network has picked up the classic Caillou Library following our repatriation of U.S. rights for the brand and PBS. And since we repurchased U.S. rights for Caillou, we've achieved more than a 50% return, underscoring the value of being an all-rights owner. And this is entirely consistent the strategy for Caillou driven by our visibility and popularity of our brand on the YouTube, Spark YouTube network. It also bears mentioning here that in Q4, our Wild Brain Spark digital platform crossed the threshold of 1 trillion minutes of watch time since being unveiled in 2016. That's not a mistake. That's 1 trillion minutes with a T. And to our knowledge, This puts Spark in an elite class of kids' content providers on YouTube. And within Wildbrain Spark, many of our brands are posting spectacular viewing numbers, but none more popular than our own Caillou, which has garnered over 75 billion minutes of watch time. And in addition to streaming the classic Caillou series on Wildbrain Spark, we've also been steadily releasing new short-form Caillou content. Delivering the series to audiences worldwide on Wild Brain Spark is driving deep engagement for Caillou. It's growing the audience and amplifying the brand. And this popularity was a springboard for reactivating the brand and leveraging new and classic content across multiple platforms, including SVOD, AVOD, and linear. In the past, it's been widely misreported that Caillou has been canceled As you can see from the deals and the numbers, Caillou is stronger than ever. I know that all of you follow the SVOD space and you've read about how streamers are refining their content plans and moving to premium programming, quality premium programming, all of which favors us. And while this may lead to some short-term reduction in certain new commissions across the industry, we think we're extremely well positioned in the changing environment. And Netflix strategy in particular has favored Wild Brain as evidenced by our ever-growing relationship. Demand remains extremely high for known kids' IP. And that drives subscribers. It keeps down churn. And we are the foremost independent owner and producer of that kind of content. We have an incredibly strong content pipeline. And as I said at the top of today's remarks, we're building earnings momentum as we launch more and more of our branded IP. On just Netflix, as an example, our new Sonic Prime series, which is co-produced with Sega, is set to launch in winter 2022. There's tremendous positive buzz for Sonic Prime, and we've already begun signing global toy and merchandise deals for the new series, with consumer products set to roll out in calendar 2023. This builds on the already burgeoning Sonic franchise following the launch, enormously successful, feature films from Paramount, which have grossed over $720 million worldwide to date, with a third film slated for release in 2024. And please bear in mind, this is not a work-for-hire project. We are full partners in the profits of Sonic Prime, as well as being additionally compensated as producers, distributors, and licensing agents in consumer products, I should note as well, also on Netflix, which was announced just last week, a refreshed version of our 2015 Teletubbies series is launching this November. This new version has been updated for U.S. audiences with fresh elements, including new narration, music videos, and diverse sun babies, all reimagining another beloved brand from our library for today's generation. And it's also worth noting that that on our own Wild Brain Spark platform, Teletubbies has garnered over 44 billion minutes of watch time since just 2016. And we're going to be making additional exciting announcements about the Teletubbies franchise in the coming weeks, so please stay tuned. Also on Netflix was the announcement of season four of Chip and Potato, which will be launching this fall. And Chip and Potato is a terrific example of our brand capabilities extending from development and production through global distribution, consumer products licensing, and even new toys launching at retail this fall. Chip and Potato is really a great example of leveraging our 360-degree capabilities, which start with owned IP, producing creative content, engaging viewers, and finally moving to consumer products upside. And last, but certainly not least, Netflix is also behind to our original Strawberry Shortcake series, Berry in the Big City. And as we continue to ramp up the launch, relaunch, I should say, of Strawberry Shortcake, we're looking forward to the exclusive launch on the platform next year of four new CG animated specials for the brand. So in addition to Netflix, our Apple TV relationship remains stronger than ever. Apple TV last month on the platform launched our latest Peanuts family special, Lucy's School, well as additional episodes of the snoopy show so in total now there are four family specials on the platform multiple seasons of two original peanut series 48 series episodes in class and in addition there are two original documentaries and 13 classic peanut specials apple tv is the greatest home ever for peanuts and there's a lot more to come in that pipeline So let me turn to consumer products. Within our wholly owned CPLG business, we secured the rights as the exclusive licensing agent for the Peanuts brand in Asia Pacific, which bolstered the recently announced expansion of our agency's business into that region. And the deal consolidates CPLG's longstanding Peanuts licensing relationship across EMEA. And more recently, we added India, which has seen Peanuts featured in extensive cross-category promotions, for apparel, toys, games, homewares, and more. Global annual consumer product sales for peanuts now exceeds $2.5 billion at retail. As we continue to roll out our new peanuts content on Apple TV+, as well as additional platforms in China, we believe there's plenty of runway to continue to grow the brand. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Aaron to review our results in detail.