WSP Global Inc.

Mesdames et messieurs, good morning ladies and gentlemen. Bienvenue à la conférence téléphonique sur les résultats financiers du quatrième trimestre et de l'exercice 2021 de WSP. Welcome to WSP's fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 results conference call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Quentin Webber, Senior Advisor, Investor Relations. A vous la parole. Please go ahead, Mr. Webber.

Good morning. We hope that you're all safe and doing well. Thank you for taking the time to join the call, during which we will be discussing our Q4 and fiscal 2021 performance, our outlook for 2022, followed by a Q&A session. This will be followed at 9.30 a.m. by a three-hour webcast, where we will present in detail our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan and long-term vision. With us today are Alexandre Lerue, our President and CEO, and Alain Michaud, our CFO. Please note that this call is also accessible on our website via webcast. During the call, we will be making some forward-looking statements and actual results could be different from those expressed or implied. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in our most recent management discussion and analysis. Also, during the call, we may refer to certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are defined in our management discussion and analysis for the year-end at December 31, 2021, which can be found on CDAR and on our website. Our MD&A also includes reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures. Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and results of operation as they provide additional key metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and may differ from similarly named measures as reported by other issuers, and accordingly may not be comparable. These measures should not be viewed as a substitute for the related differential information prepared in accordance with IFRS. With that, I will now turn the call over to Alexandre.

Thank you, Quentin, and good morning, everyone. As we gather today, I would like to begin by acknowledging the humanitarian crisis taking place in Ukraine. We are deeply troubled by the conflict in our thoughts with all those who are impacted, including many of our colleagues who have relatives and other loved ones in arms weight. We are closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine and the sanctions which have been imposed in recent days. We can confirm that WSP has no employees or offices in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. While we have a limited number of ongoing assignments involving projects in Russia, we have decided to exit such assignments for which we have a non-material exposure. Furthermore, we will no longer be pursuing any further assignment in Russia. Putting these unfortunate events aside, I am excited to be here today sharing with you our results for Q4 and 2021, but also proudly bringing closure to our 2019-2021 strategic cycle and introducing our future-ready 2022-2024 Strategic Action Plan along with an ambitious long-term vision. Let me start with our results for which I would like to highlight a key few points, or a few key points I should say first. The fourth quarter delivered very strong results across all financial metrics, organically net by almost 10% in the quarter, and our adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 140 basis point versus 2020. For the full year, our results are equally strong due to both the strong performance of our platform and the solid contribution of recent acquisitions. Our adjusted net earnings per share grew by more than 40%, and our balance sheet and cash collection remain strong. Second. Market conditions continue to be highly favorable and throughout 2021 proposal activity resulted in a record high backlog with an overall organic growth of 10% year over year. The demand of our core sectors is growing and we are well positioned to leverage those opportunities. Third, the addition of Goldr has been a great success on all fronts. Goldr is finishing the year with a strong profitability and an impressive 8% organic growth, making 2021 one of the strongest years in its history. Integration is nearing completion, and we are proud of the great talent that we have welcomed into the organization. As we enter 2022, we are seeing a growing number of collaborative opportunities across our key business lines of transportation and infrastructure, earth and environment, and properties and buildings. In summary, we cannot have hope for a better finish to 2021, capping off a solid year of achievements. Our efforts to lead by example in ESG continue to be recognized. I'm proud to share we recently qualified for inclusion in the S&P Sustainability Yearbook, a recognition of our strong position in our industry. We're able to deliver strong rankings and we're also awarded an Industry Mover Sustainability Award for recording the strongest improvement in our industry. We're also recently recognized as a global market leading provider of ESG and sustainability consulting services in the Verdantix Green Quadrant ESG and Sustainability Consulting 2022 report. Many ESG and sustainability consultancy firms were assessed on their ability to deliver a wide range of ESG services and support their clients in implementing sustainability in their business, and we were honored to be named as one of the top-ranking companies, confirming our position at the forefront of our industry. On the acquisitions front, we remain active and most recently added in-depth policy, financial, technical, and international development expertise to our leading sustainability strategy and resilient infrastructure capabilities to our acquisition of climate finance advisor, LLC. Let's now cover a few exciting project wins. With investment in the clean energy industry scaling up, we are in a great position to capitalize on this market and have recently been awarded more than $100 million in work as a direct result of leveraging our global expertise across the entire project lifecycle for high voltage. Direct current power transmission system, one of these projects supports a high profile of leading-edge $11 billion Clean Path New York infrastructure program. When completed, this will deliver more than 7.5 million megawatt hours of emissions-free energy to New York City. Leveraging our global footprint is also delivering success for our multinational global clients program. WSP was recently awarded a project to complete the permitting for 14,000 kilometers of cable connecting North and South America for Google. The cabling will run from the east coast of the U.S. to Argentina and will be the longest in the world capable of running from a single source or single power source, I should say, bringing greater reliability and bandwidth in South America. Moreover, we continue to work with the Toronto Transit Commission as we provide multidisciplinary services for the electrification and charging infrastructure of 8 Bus Depot. This is an integral part of TTC's drive to decarbonize their fleets and power their buses using clean energy. This is a great example of having a direct impact and contributing to the green transition. Before turning to Alain, I would like to take a moment to review a successful 2019-2021 strategic cycle. Through the deliberate evolution of our core pillars, and the dedication and resilience of our people, I am extremely proud to report that we have delivered our 2019-2021 strategic ambitions with over $8 billion of net revenues and adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.8%, significantly above our three-year target range of 15% to 16%. and a strong balance sheet resulting from robust cash flow generation standing at 175% of cumulative three-year net earnings, which provide ample financial flexibility. Our 2019-2021 success demonstrates the strength of our diversified platform, the relevancy of our services to our clients, and the strong alignment with market trends driving the world economy. We now have a robust balance sheet and a healthy backlog that can support growth, representing a solid foundation on which to build our next strategic cycle. Alain will now review our quarterly financial results and where we finished the year in addition to covering our 2022 outlook. Alain, over to you.