Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Aimia Inc. third quarter 2022 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode, and following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Albert Matousek. Please go ahead. Thank you, Kelsey, and welcome everyone to this morning's call. Today's presentation is available on SEDAR and on our website. Before we get underway, I'd like to remind everyone to review our forward-looking statements and the cautions and risk factors pertaining to the statement. My name is Albert Matousek, Head of IR and Communications. With me on the call today are speakers Phil Mittleman, Aimia's CEO, Michael Lehmann, our President, and Steve Leonard, our CFO. Phil will begin with our strategic highlights, followed by Michael, who will cover the performance of our investments before handing the call over to Steve to take you through the results of the quarter. We will have time for your questions at the end. With that, let me hand it over to Phil. Thanks, Albert, and good morning to everyone on the phone and webcast today. To recap the strategic highlights for the quarter, we are pleased with our results, the highlights of which included earnings of CAD 5.93 per common share, mainly due to the closing of the PLM transaction, whereby Aimia recognized a gain net of tax of CAD 530.6 million. Aimia intends to deploy most of the proceeds towards investments in companies with long-term track records of free cash flow generation as well as exciting growth prospects that will utilize our tax losses. We also continue to repurchase shares under our NCIB. So far this year, we have repurchased over 8 million shares of our common stock. We continue to opportunistically buy back our shares as we see a significant discount to our intrinsic value. Now on to our holdings. TRADE X continues to grow as it opens new global trade corridors to facilitate cross-border automotive transactions across Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The company did experience some macro headwinds during the quarter as it refocused its business by reducing inventory risk and its associated working capital needs to focus more on a transactional platform model. We remain confident and excited about TRADE X's future. Moving to Kognitiv. Revenues were down in the quarter versus the prior year, but remained slightly ahead on a year-to-date basis as Kognitiv's customer retention continues to be very high. The company is focused on reducing costs and improving efficiencies to achieve profitability while it pursues additional financing to improve its liquidity profile. Moving to our investment in Clear Media. The slowing Chinese economy and recent COVID-related shutdowns have created a challenging operating environment for outdoor advertising in China. Clear Media is facing a situation that is similar to the first half of 2020, and the company has responded by implementing cost-saving initiatives. Clear Media is a high-quality business that stands to benefit from its sizable market position once China reopens and once the mobility restrictions are lifted. We remain very excited about Clear Media's future prospects. Moving to our investment in Capital A. AirAsia continues to see the benefit of increased travel as the Southeast Asia region emerges from COVID restrictions. This low-cost airline is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the sizable pent-up demand for travel across Southeast Asia, while Capital A continues to develop and enhance the value of its digital assets. With that, let me turn the floor over to Mike to provide you some further info updates on our investment portfolio. Mike? Thanks, Phil, and good morning to everyone. I'm gonna begin with a review of TRADE X. TRADE X generated gross vehicle sales of approximately CAD 176 million in the third quarter, which was below the level of gross vehicle sales in the most recent quarter, but was a significant increase from the period from last year, mainly as a result of acquisitions closed in the fourth quarter of 2021. Year to date, TRADE X generated gross vehicle sales of CAD 647 million, which is tracking below the full year guidance of approximately CAD 1 billion as a result of a pullback in volume and a reduction in vehicle prices due to market headwinds that the industry has experienced beginning this summer. We now expect TRADE X to generate full year gross vehicle sales of between CAD 800 million and CAD 900 million for the full year 2021, significantly above last year. The company continues to develop its platform and expand its trade corridors and distribution partners. It continues to work through certain operational trade financing challenges that often accompany rapid growth. Moving on to Kognitiv. In the third quarter, revenues from continuing operations were CAD 13.5 million, a decrease of CAD 500,000 or 3.6% over the same period last year, mainly due to lower margin client roll-offs offset in turn by new client revenues. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was a loss of CAD 7.9 million, an improvement of CAD 600,000 over the same period last year, mainly due to lower technology and compensation expenses, with the latter impacted by headcount reductions offset in part by lower revenue. Kognitiv continues to focus on maximizing revenue growth from existing clients by expanding its current client subscription base through member growth, as well as widening the scope of their service engagements. In addition, the management team remains focused on expense reduction initiatives to improve its cost structure as it aligns its commercial delivery model. Moving on to Clear Media. Total revenue for the nine months ended February of 30, 2022 was CNY 526 million renminbi and continues to be affected by COVID-related shutdowns throughout China. In most markets globally, out-of-home advertising continues to experience strong growth, often high single digit organic sequential growth. Once the mobility restrictions are lifted in Clear Media's markets, we anticipate a similar rebound to its street furniture business, but until that time, Clear Media's recovery is being delayed. Next up is Capital A. In the third quarter operating results, the airline carried 9.9 million passengers, almost 23 times the volume carried in the same period 2021. This represents only 54% of 2019's passenger levels, so there's still room to recover. The trend continues to be positive, with quarter-over-quarter growth of 36%. AirAsia set a quarterly load factor of 86%, the highest figure recorded since the onset of the pandemic. This low-cost airline is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the sizable pent-up demand for travel across Southeast Asia, while Capital A continues to develop and enhance the value of its digital assets. Finally, returning to our investment management business. Revenue for the quarter from investment management fees were approximately CAD 400 thousand, and the earnings before income taxes was a loss of CAD 100 thousand. Assets under management were CAD 125.6 million at the end of the third quarter, down 10.4% sequentially, largely due to the negative performance of MIM's concentrated value-oriented portfolio, which was impacted by the broad-based weakness in the global equity markets, offset in part by new inflows from existing clients. With that, let me turn it over to Steve to take you through the financial results. Steve? Thanks, Mike. Let's begin by covering the consolidated results before we move to the segment performance and cash movements in the quarter. Starting with our consolidated results. In the third quarter, income from investments was CAD 533.9 million compared to CAD 7 million of income last year. The positive performance was mainly related to the close of the PLM transaction, whereby Aimia recognized a gain net of tax of CAD 530.6 million. Expenses were in line with the prior year period of around CAD 3 million when you exclude stock-based compensation and the current quarter goodwill impairment charge of CAD 11.4 million and the litigation provision of CAD 4 million. For the holding segment, corporate expenses, which include compensation, professional and advisory fees, as well as insurance, technology and other office expenses, were CAD 4.9 million in the quarter. Excluding the CAD 4 million litigation provision and CAD 2.5 million credit associated with stock-based compensation, Holdco expenses were CAD 3.4 million for the quarter, a decrease of CAD 300,000 versus the same period last year. Moving on to cover major cash movements for the quarter. We ended the third quarter with cash of CAD 521 million. Adding in marketable securities of CAD 36.6 million not held in Precog, total cash and marketable securities were CAD 557 million, CAD 557.6 million at the end of the quarter. The main movements in cash this quarter were net proceeds from the PLM transaction of CAD 537.3 million, CAD 32.1 million used to repurchase shares under the NCIB, a CAD 14.2 million currency translation adjustment, CAD 3.1 million of preferred dividends and a related Part VI tax of CAD 1.3 million, and Holdco cash operating expenses of CAD 3.4 million. Available tax losses approximated CAD 785 million at the end of the third quarter, which has increased partly due to currency post-filing of the returns. The distribution is comprised of CAD 390 million in capital losses and CAD 395 million in net operating losses, mostly in the U.S. and Canada. As mentioned earlier, we intend to utilize these tax losses to mitigate taxable operating and capital earnings generated from our investments. With that, let me now turn it over to Phil to wrap up with a few concluding remarks. Phil? Thanks, Steve. This is a very exciting time for Aimia. Having successfully navigated the Aeroméxico bankruptcy, two waves of COVID, achieving successful liquidity events and legacy holdings, and having repurchased approximately 9% of our outstanding common shares so far this year, we are now extremely well positioned. The recent dislocations in the capital markets are creating great opportunities for Aimia, now armed with over CAD 550 million in cash and liquid investments, no debt, and approximately CAD 785 million in tax losses. We are in advanced stages with some exciting investment opportunities, and we hope to be able to share further information with you in the near future. Thank you. Kelsey, that concludes today's prepared remarks. Please go ahead and conference for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be polled in the order that they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Surinder Thind from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thank you. I'd like to start with a question about just capital allocation. Can you maybe provide any color on what some of the mix that you're thinking of between share repurchases and dividends at this point? Is that somewhat of a flexible target relative to your target of CAD 75 million over return. Yeah. Hi, Surinder. Yeah, we, you know, it's a balancing act. We, you know, because of the uncertainty in the debt markets, some of the targets we're looking to acquire are obviously gonna take on debt at the sub-level. Until we're clear on what type of cash we need to transact, we'll revisit the amount of money that we'll consider using for repurchases and/or dividends at that point. Thank you. Just following on in terms of just some of the holdings that you have, is there maybe a little bit color that you can provide more on TRADE X in terms of just kind of the business decisions that are being made there? It sounds like maybe they were, you know, expanding too quickly or the macro kind of hit them a little quicker than anticipated. How should we think about, you know, when you talk about reducing inventory risk and some of those kinds of things that how much of those are kind of startup issues and how much of them are kind of business decisions at this point? Yeah, I think it was a little of both. I think they got a little ahead of themselves in terms of when the market got really hot, we think they bought too much inventory, anticipating kind of a, you know, limitless demand and limitless ability to access working capital. When things, you know, took a turn, they were in the middle of actually a financing raise at the time. They had raised some money at a significantly higher valuation. When the tech spigots kind of turned off for the world, they had to step back and, you know, kind of repivot on their model and say liquidate inventory, focus on the transactional model, you know, pre-sold only cars. In the meantime, they took obviously some hits in terms of valuation of those vehicles. You know, it was just kind of getting a little ahead of themselves, growing too fast. I think they're doing a good job of adjusting. Going forward, you're gonna see, you know, much more, transaction-oriented model with much less reliance on inventory and working capital. Got it. If I could jump in for a second. Surinder, it's Mike Lehmann. TRADE X, just to kind of reiterate, TRADE X is a B2B model, right? Not a B2C model like a Carvana and the like. With regard to the B2B model, they're certainly impacted, but not to the degree that the B2C is and other asset-heavy businesses are. You know, TRADE X is more of the brokerage model, so they own the platform sitting in the middle, and they participate with each party, both the buyer and the seller. They just transact in the middle. The inventory that they had was part of the startup costs and the startup assets to get into different trade corridors. They get into those trade corridors, they were adding inventory in order to prime the demand within that to satisfy the demand in those markets. That was more of a one-time effect than part of their long-term business model. Understood. It sounds like that this should theoretically be an asset-light business, right? That's right. Much more of a technology-oriented form, and it's more about just entering geographies and so forth, that there's these kind of inventory or startup tech costs. That's exactly right. The way to think about it is they have this platform sitting in the middle and they're the ones that are able to both gauge what customers have to sell, the autos that they have to sell, as well as what customers' demand is, the pull-through, what they wanna buy. When somebody comes in and says, "I wanna buy 150 cars of this year, this model, this mileage, this kind of trim package," they can put that into the TRADE X model and the TRADE X model will. It's called an instant request. Then they put that out to all of their customers that are on the sell side, and the sell side folks can match those buys. They sit in the middle, and they just clip on cash flow on both sides. You're right, it's asset light and, you know, it's very akin to, you know, the equity markets of Bloomberg or a capital markets program where they're sitting in the middle and there are buyers and sellers creating demand off of one another. Their platform and the ability to recognize what the inventory level is for people that wanna sell and where the demand is for people who wanna buy, that's the attractive value here. That's actually really helpful. Then just thinking about big picture, and kind of as you look towards making the next set of investments, can you maybe talk about a little bit about the attractiveness of more local North America in the current environment versus maybe more globally at this point, or how should we think about the trade-offs, especially in an environment where the macro seems to be slowing? Is that part of the consideration at this point? How should we think about that? Yeah, no, we look globally. We obviously appreciate that some of the bigger dislocations are happening outside of North America. Whatever we do, however, will take advantage of our available NOLs and capital losses in North America. If we were to transact in something outside the U.S. It would be more of a global business that could have a footprint in Canada or the U.S. ultimately that would tap those. We do look and are looking globally. But the companies that we're looking at all have the same attributes, which are long track records of free cash flow generation through economic cycles, great management teams. Strong growth rates. We're combing the world, and we do obviously have, you know, that in mind as well. Right. Just in terms of kind of thematically as you think about investing globally, can you maybe talk a little bit about are there additional market considerations at this point, given it seems like China may be a bit more difficult to invest in? How should we think about the investment there at this point? It seems like, you know, there's less and less. Mm-hmm. appetite for investment in the region, and maybe just some geopolitical considerations there. Yeah. I mean, when we went into the investment in China, through Clear Media, and we understood that there was geopolitical risk. Obviously, those risks have heightened since we made the investment. The partners that we took on there were really the best partners you could ever assemble. We have, you know, JCDecaux, the leader in that business in the world. We have Ant Financial and effectively through an investment fund, Chinese government. You know, you couldn't ask for a better group to navigate what's going on there. I think that obviously we wouldn't seek out further investments into that type of a geopolitical climate now. You know, being in there and having to navigate through, I mean, the unlikely bad luck of being, you know, the only place in the world with zero COVID policy when you're an outdoor advertising firm is not ideal. This company is very resilient. It's a great business. I think they'll survive it and thrive quickly thereafter. I think, you know, having these type of partners through this period can also provide opportunity. You know, there's also weakened competitors. You know, there's always a possibility of M&A in situations like this. You know, I think, you know, we're happy with the partnership. We're happy with where the business is gonna wind up. We're not happy with having to endure this period, and it's not, you know, a fun thing for shareholders to endure. If you're gonna go through it, you wanna go through it with this group and this type of business that can, you know, they can cut costs during times like this, and they quickly scale back up when things rebound, as we saw after the first COVID wave. We had a really fast snapback. You know, optimistic about the future of it. Not going forward. You won't see us getting into situations with that level of geopolitical risk, especially for, you know, large investments that we're gonna be controlling. Got it. In terms of, I guess finally maybe a question on Capital A at this point. When we think about, you know, the rebound in travel or, you know, it's starting to rebound, you know, we're still well below pandemic levels, what's your willingness to kind of be patient at this point in terms of maybe not just Capital A, but the broader portfolio? Does it make sense to, you know, think about the current holdings relative to the opportunity cost at this point? Or is this something where, you know, it just makes more sense to, you know, wait a few years if that's the right way to think about it? I mean, if we were facing an opportunity that required cash and we had to decide between Capital A and that investment, we would obviously have to weigh the opportunity cost. In our current situation where we have a lot of cash, we have the ability to be patient and let it play out a little, you know, more. The reason Capital A has been depressed is I think if it wasn't for the fact that they have to deal with a regulator there and they had to adjust their balance sheet and go through a process there. Once that's resolved, I think there's been a fear of delisting there that caused the stock to drop and stay low, and I think that's artificially been depressing what would otherwise be recognizing a strong rebound in their business. I think once that's corrected, I think the stock will reflect more accurately what's going on there, which is a very sharp rebound of the business and some of their underlying assets. We're patient. It's not to refresh your memory, I'm not sure since you're. I know you're a little new to the story, but the bulk of this stock was acquired because we sold AirAsia a 20% stake in their loyalty business that we owned, that we had determined we were not gonna see any cash flow from in the future. We thought it made sense to convert that into liquid shares of the airline, which we think have upside and obviously a lot more liquidity than the previous holding had. We're not. This isn't like a, you know, we don't seek out investments in airlines typically. We don't. You know, the models are not looking for cyclical businesses, especially like airlines. In this case, it was unique, the situation we found ourselves in and we're definitely patient enough to wait till we get what we think is a fair value for it, which is significantly higher than where the stock is now. Got it. Okay. That's it for me on the questions. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Surinder. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Morrison from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Phil, can I just follow up- Hi, Brian. On your capital? Good morning. Can I just follow up on the capital allocation question? I'm not sure that I got it clearly. Are you still committed to the CAD 75 million through an NCIB and special dividend potential, post the PLM transaction? Well, when we first announced the CAD 75 million, there was an NCIB underway that we were optimistic we could utilize because we knew PLM was coming and was hopefully gonna close sooner than it did. We missed that window. The first NCIB we missed. We renewed the second NCIB, which we fully took advantage of. In the meantime, we're obviously reviewing and in advanced stages on some larger investments. Because of the fact that we don't know exactly what the equity check size is gonna be required for some of these deals we're looking at, we're gonna make those deals. We've obviously acquired a lot of stock. We've spent, you know, approximately CAD 35 million buying back through this NCIB. As you know, we love buying back our stock, and we wanna keep buying back our stock, especially at these prices. We have to figure out how much cash we need for these deals we're considering. Once we have a clear handle on that, then we'll revisit what we're gonna do on the buyback and our dividend side. Okay. I guess, question for Steve, maybe. Did the value of your tax losses increase this quarter? I thought they were CAD 750 million previously. Well, half of the NOLs, Brian, are actually a little bit more of the NOLs is almost two-thirds are in USD. Got it. Currency was a driver. There's always a few other things as we file returns. There's some additional losses that are accreting, but mainly it was currency. Got it. Thank you. Mike, maybe just a couple operational questions. I wanna follow up on TRADE X. I understand the de-risking of the model. Are you able to share what the percentage of sales is that were inventory transactions versus, say, transactional? As you de-risk the model here, is there any risk of obsolescence, or is it immaterial at this point in time? Yeah. Thanks for that, Brian. We can't get into the very specific details, but I can say over 90%, closer to 95% are pre-sold cars. Those are cars that they're just sitting in the middle, if you would, right? You know, as you can imagine, you know, they get into new markets, and those new markets are, you know, and there's a great demand for cars. That's why they're signing on with TRADE X. They need cars, they need inventory, and TRADE X is a perfect partner to provide that inventory. But there needs to be a little bit of a proof of the model. What they have done is they've acquired cars and moved them into that market, so there can be very quick transactions that occur to prime the pump, if you would. It's kind of not really the right term, but directionally it is. As they move cars into the Dominican Republic, for example, and there's a massive demand for kind of middle market cars there, they can have cars either on the water or being transported. When there's a transaction demand, they can just hit it immediately and all of a sudden get into that market, feel some share in that market, get some a lot of velocity, I would say. You know, it was. I think it was a difficult period during the summer because they acquired some inventory. It did increase the demand from dealers dramatically, which is a great thing long term. They held inventory with, you know, as you can see, for the past four months consecutively, MMR has traded down, right? The average pricing of cars has moved down. If you just look at the average price of cars sold, it's been kind of the mid to high twenties, and all of a sudden it softened into the mid to low twenties. That's just the overall market moving down. I don't think that the likelihood of this being an asset-heavy business. In fact, it's not going to be an asset-heavy business. This is going to be an asset-light business sitting in the middle. It was just kind of a point in time situation where they did get caught with a little bit of inventory and, you know, CAD 500 or CAD 200 per unit adds up. That's really the reason. Going forward, it's gonna be much closer to that 95% pre-sold cars. Okay. Thank you for that. Maybe if I can follow up. Yeah. On Kognitiv. It looks like the carrying value of your common share holdings went down a little bit this quarter once again. Does the lowering of the valuation take into consideration the potential need for additional capital? If so, are there any additional creative sources available within just, you know, vanilla equity? The decline you're seeing there, Brian, is just our non-cash charge from their quarterly loss. It's not like we're- The equity accounting of it. Yeah. Okay. It is the equity accounting. We're not saying they're actually and doing a write down. It's just a natural reduction. Yeah. Yeah, they're, you know, they have non-core assets that they could sell. They have some other options. Yeah, they're pursuing all different options. I think, you know, when this tech crash, tsunami hit, I think a lot of companies, including Kognitiv, were just forced to face reality and say, "Look, we've got to live in a world where there may not be financing sources available. We've got to make these models work." I think it's ultimately healthy for everybody to do that. I think it just accelerated Kognitiv's efforts to get their cost structure in line, focus on the right business initiatives, you know, and going forward. Yeah, there are, you know. They're exploring all the options that they have available to them, and it's more than just a typical raise. Yes. Okay. If only last question. In terms of your significant cash resources, obviously you're in a very fortuitous position. Are you able to provide, narrow down any of the sector, sectors that you're focused on and you know, progress with due diligence on that front? I mean, we can't really give detail, except to say that the sectors are the type of sectors we would, you know, have said we would go after, companies that don't burn cash or significant cash during severe downturns. Obviously, as you face recessions, we wanna make sure that these are companies that, you know, either are recession-proof or recession-resistant. They'll share the attributes of long track records that you can see of generating a lot of cash and growing throughout economic cycles. They'll be, you know, a moat to entry in the sector. They all have great management teams. I think companies that we're advanced with are companies that maybe we wouldn't even see during, you know, the boom times. Mm-hmm. I think a lot of buyers have dropped out of the market because they can't do what we can do. I would say that we are like a buyer going into a real estate transaction with no mortgage contingency, and paying all cash, whereas other people require, you know, 50% mortgages. With the debt markets the way they are, while we intend to put modest amounts of leverage on at the sub level on these deals, we don't have to up front. We can move forward aggressively and, you know, be at the front of the buyer list because of that. At the same time, obviously you're seeing seller realization that because of that, their prices are more reasonable. Right. You're seeing, you know, while you're never gonna see a great company transact at, you know, 5x EBITDA, you're gonna see great companies drop from, you know, 11-12 down to, you know, 8-9. It's a big difference in allowing us entry into those type of things. Companies that are really just A-plus companies across the board is what you should expect to see, and we're excited to give you more info when we can in the near future. All right. Well, I look forward to seeing what you uncover. Thanks very much, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. There are no further questions at this time. You may please proceed. Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call and webcast. I wish you all a great rest of the day. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you very much for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.