All right, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Daryl Young, research analyst on the Stifel team. We're going to hear from Dentalcorp now, which is Canada's largest DSO by a landslide, with, I guess, approaching 600 locations at this point. Here with me today is Company President Nate Tchaplia and Nick Xiang, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, and generally everything under the sun, right, Nick? Whatever needs to get the job done. The Swiss Army knife. Just to kick things off, maybe you guys have been here for three or four years now, I think, but maybe we just start with a quick overview of Dentalcorp, the history, and what the Canadian market looks like today. Absolutely, and thanks for having us, Daryl. As mentioned, the business was founded in 2011. It has grown now to nearly 600 practices. We're the only national dental platform in Canada, in every province and one territory. The Canadian dental industry is roughly CAD 22 billion-CAD 23 billion in size in Canadian dollars. From a consolidation perspective, roughly 7% of the market is consolidated. We make up roughly half of that. The Canadian market is 16,000 clinics across the country. Predominantly, we've grown through acquisition in each year of our existence, delivering double-digit growth, both in locations, in revenue, and EBITDA, and ultimately delivering roughly 15%+ free cash flow per share growth as well. We went public in May of 2021 and ultimately focus on continuing to deliver 4%+ organic growth year in and year out, supported by acquisitions in roughly the CAD 25 million+ a year range. Maybe just to kick things off, we'll do a fireside chat format. There'll be time for questions at the end. One thing that I think is a little bit unique about the Dentalcorp model in Canada, for sure, is just your focus on entrepreneurial dentists. You've got a bit of a unique compensation model, I think, that incentivizes the dentist to continue growing their practices post-joining the Dentalcorp team. Maybe you can just talk a little bit about how that works. Absolutely. One of the things that we're really proud of is across all of our partners, and those are ultimately the vendors of the dental practices that joined us, 93% of every partner and vendor since 2011 is still with us today. Average age of the selling dentist to us, surprisingly, is in their early to mid-40s. This isn't a retirement play for them at all. Long tail of continued leadership and growth in the practice, 20-25+ years post-joining Dentalcorp. From an acquisition structure perspective, and this is something that we've been ruthlessly consistent with really since day one, is ensuring that there's alignment all the way through the piece. Our acquisitions are structured in roughly 80%-85% cash, with the remainder in Dentalcorp equity, which ultimately the vendor partners hold until the end of their initial five-year term, which also has a piece vesting each year through that initial five years. In Canada, dentists get paid a percentage of what they personally bill, so they have a direct drive on their personal productivity and keeps them aligned and really focused on continuing to do all the great things that they do. In addition to that, from the acquisition EBITDA perspective, we provide them with continued participation in the growth. So they get roughly 20% of the growth above the acquisition level, and that level does never reset. They have the ability to continue to be aligned with us in the growth of the four walls of the practice, focus on more than just their personal billings, really ensuring that the schedules are filled, the associates are being mentored and trained up, and the hygiene is doing all the things that it should be doing. They are able to build that passive income pool and continue to earn above-market compensation. On the flip side, in an underperformance scenario, the vendor partners take the first 10% downside. The example is a $500,000 EBITDA practice. If it delivers $450,000 after acquisition, that first $50,000 will be reduced from the dentist compensation on the go forward. They are aligned in Dentalcorp top co. They are aligned in their personal productivity. They are aligned in the growth of the practice. They are also aligned to the downside because they do continue to be leaders and drivers in that location. Great. Had a great Q1, great start to the year this year. Organic growth approaching 5%. Maybe you can just unpack that a little bit for us in terms of where that's coming from and the sustainability across the remainder of the year of sort of almost 5% growth rate. Yeah, absolutely. The 4.6% in Q1 obviously was a great quarter for us. When we think about a medium-term guide, and if you look back historically, any extended period of time, whether it's a year, two years, three years, or four, 4% has kind of always been that number. It's a number kind of we expect moving forward. How that's broken out is roughly 2.5% from price, so 250 basis points, and then you're getting another 150 basis points split roughly 50/50 between volume and insourcing. Insourcing is when we bring in additional services. As Nate mentioned, we're a predominantly GP business, so we're bringing in some Invisalign and orthodontics work and also some implant work into our existing locations to help drive that growth, we'll call it, in excess of what an independent or a mom-and-pop could do. 400 basis points, 250 from price, 150 split 50/50 from volume and insourcing. Alongside that, you've had the last couple of quarters some really good numbers around active patients in your network. You're, I guess, close to 10% the last few quarters. Some of that's obviously coming from your acquisition and new practices in the network. How are you driving more patients through the doors in excess of that sort of 5% M&A growth? Yeah, absolutely. You're right, a chunk of that is going to come from M&A growth. In terms of kind of driving additional patient visits, it's two-fold. One, it's obviously driving new patients, period. We have a marketing playbook that we instill in the majority of our practices, so we take over kind of the marketing function, not necessarily an increase in spend, but just kind of doing things differently. If you think about a mom-and-pop dentist's office down the street that most of you in this room are probably going to, probably not optimized when it comes to patient recall, probably not optimized when it comes to SEO or when it comes to even having a functioning website and internet presence. We take all that, and that helps with driving new patients. On the existing patients piece, so there's a lot of, we'll call it, clinical training and education that we give to our team members across the country, and that drives, we'll call it, the optimal amount of care or the optimal amount of visits. You'll see that, roughly speaking, pre-Dentalcorp, you'll have patients see the pre-Dentalcorp practices roughly 2.1x per year. Post-Dentalcorp, after kind of some of those things I talked about, along with the additional insourcing initiatives that we have, that jumps up to, call it, 2.4x over a period of 18 + months. It's driving new patients. It's also driving the optimal amount of visits in existing patients as well. You mentioned a little bit about some of your insourcing of ortho and implant work, but you've also been executing on a strategy of right-sizing your specialty practices. Over the last couple of years, we've really seen you divest of some of the specialty practices. Maybe you can just give us a bit of an update on what the mix of practices are today, GP versus Specialty, and what the strategy is going forward on specialty services. Absolutely. Roughly 95%+ of our business is General Practice Family Dentistry, really focusing on the bread and butter and driving through education, through support, the increase in modalities of service, whether it be Invisalign and/or implant placements, which is additive to the overall business. From a specialty perspective, we divested, frankly, all of our all but two standalone orthodontic practices. These were all acquisitions that were done pre-2014, really with the strategy around it being you build density in any region, and then you have that referral to the specialist from the general dentist that you have. Two things happened. One, really, where is the value in a dental practice? The value is in the patient. And ultimately, when we partner with a dentist, all of our general practices have 3+ dentists. The relationship is multi-prong, and you have that long lifetime with that patient. When you look at specialty, it's one and done. The relationship is really between that referring dentist and the specialist. Whenever there is a turnover, you're really starting from day one. There's really no commercial goodwill to transfer. It's really all that personal goodwill and the specialist and the business walking in and out of the door every single day. Our strategy has really changed over time to really focusing on the general practice through education, through bringing in specialists into our general practices, and ensuring that we're able to service our patients in the best possible way. Generally, from a patient perspective in all of our surveying, they don't want to be schlepped around town, right? They want to come to the practice. It's already an anxiety-provoking event when you have to go to the dentist or any other medical practitioner. They like where they have that familiarity, that convenience. Really, that's been that shift in strategy alongside from Invisalign and other new technologies that are coming on board that are really creating the reduction of barriers for a general practitioner to start doing more increased services. From an Invisalign perspective, the training, as well as the technology, frankly, is really accessible. As far as surgery and implants, it's a little bit more involved, but that continues to be a great focus for us and a great focus for the dental industry as a whole. We've heard this morning about maybe some headwinds for the clear aligner space and a slowing of growth in the industry. Can you just give us a sense of what you're seeing in terms of case starts today? Has there been any economic sensitivity? Secondly, are you seeing consumers start to ask for different brands beyond Invisalign? I believe you're exclusively Invisalign practice, but is there price sensitivity and consumer shopping that you're seeing in your practices? Absolutely. On the first part, again, why we focus on general practice is really it's non-discretionary. And there's great compliance and consistency with the care that the patients seek out. As it relates to Invisalign or any other discretionary service, when unemployment goes up, the macros are a little bit softer. You do see a pullback on a same-store basis as it relates to that specific category. We are seeing a little bit of a pullback in that category across our business. As it relates to the insourcing of orthodontics, we have it across 330 of our roughly 600 practices. We're going to continue to roll it out to between 40-50 locations through the balance of 2025. As a category, it's going to be additive and growing. On a same-store basis, you are seeing a little bit of softness around it. From an Invisalign perspective, that's really what the patient understands. They don't call it clear aligners. It's the marketing spend that Invisalign puts forward in the market. It's deemed to be the only product. We aren't exclusive with Invisalign. There are a few other products that we use, and it's ultimately the dentist's choice to do so. I think over time, it's going to become a choice for the dentist. Today, as far as Invisalign's training, accessibility, and ultimately the user interface of their products, it today is the gold standard. Shifting gears a little bit now to the M&A environment. You guys have been very, very active since the IPO in 2021. 2024 was maybe a little bit slower year, a decision that was made to digest, I think, some of the previous elevated activity levels. 2025, though, you've already completed, I think, 70% of your target for the year. I guess you're going on an extended vacation for the back half. Maybe give us a bit of an update on what's changed in the market, what you're seeing on valuations, why the step up to start 2025? You know, the conversations that we've had in our pipeline really through since IPO have been incredibly strong. Over 700+ conversations are taking place at various stages. Since IPO 2021, we did north of CAD 40 million of deals. 2022, we did CAD 54 million. 2023, we did slow down slightly to CAD 20 million. 2024 as well. 2025, expect to be CAD 25 million+. It's not a factor of lack of opportunity. It was a factor of really trying to show the market and doing the right thing for the business to accelerate our organic growth, to really focus on driving all of the programs and all the investments that we've made in our overall business. As it stands today, we have the same team in place that we had since 2018, boots on the ground in every major market across the country. We're seeing every opportunity that transacts and, frankly, have the ability to continue to increase that. From a valuation perspective, 2024 ended really nicely, just under 7x overall on an unsynergized basis. From acquisitions, we're seeing it kind of in that same 7x-7.5 x range through 2025. Really, really strong pipeline, great opportunities. Frankly, from a market perspective, it's no surprise. The Canadian market's only 7% consolidated, so the runway is very significant. As you think about the M&A outlook over the next couple of years, your three to five-year outlook for where Dentalcorp could go and how big Dentalcorp could be, what should investors be thinking about on that front? You know, I think without doing a whole lot of math, this is a compounder. We've been a double-digit grower every year in our history if we can continue to do what we're doing and, frankly, continue to grow our pacing from 25-30 +. This is a business that can be double in the next five years. When you think about the doubling of the business, over the years, you guys have teased out the idea of potentially expanding into the U.S. How does that fit into that sort of three to five-year doubling of the business? What are the drivers of wanting to go to the U.S. when Canada is so fragmented still? Yeah, so the doubling of the business is something that we can do purely in the Canadian market. As we continue to think about our growth in the long term, dentistry is dentistry. There's some slight variations as it relates to the payer model in the U.S. versus Canada, but we've built an infrastructure that can support dentists, leading clinicians, and teams, frankly, across the country, whether it's in Vancouver or whether it's in New York, Miami, or wherever else it is. Dentistry is dentistry. As we look at the market, albeit the U.S. is 25%-30% consolidated, the unconsolidated portion of the U.S. market is 10x the size of Canada. As we take a step back and really think about that five-year plus, this is a business that can double. We'll never take anything away from the growth that we're able to achieve in Canada, but in the long term, the U.S. is a great opportunity to continue to be additive to our overall growth trajectory. How should investors think about if you were to enter into the U.S.? Just the margin profile, is there additional costs that come with setting up shop on day one, or is this something that you can continue? Because you've had a great inflection for the last couple of quarters of sort of 20 basis points of operating leverage and margin expansion. Does that jeopardize it at all if you shift into the U.S.? Not at all. I think the margin expansion predominantly comes from our overall operating leverage on our corporate infrastructure. Depending on the pace of acquisition, the faster we grow, the greater margin expansion we are able to achieve. As far as Québec, for example, Québec is a province we did not enter into until 2018. Today, we have over 100 practices in that province. What we do is we build relationships, we build density one by one, and really build a market that is supportive. There is no additional investment that would be required from the U.S. versus any investment that we would need to continue to support our growth across Canada. On a practice level basis, the margins are essentially identical, so there won't be any degradation there either. Got it. You just gave us some color on the operating leverage, but the margins have been great in the last few quarters and continue to expand. Where are you at in terms of your corporate infrastructure today, and how much scale can you drive or how much revenue can you drive over the existing base? Yeah, that's a good question. Two years ago, 2022 and 2023 were significant years of corporate investment. The two biggest systems that we revamped were our HRIS system, which is now Workday, and our ERP system, which is now Oracle. You saw a little bit of a trough there from those outsized investments, but those are things you make every 10+ years, if not longer. It really is to kind of have that base and that foundation to be able to double the business for the next five years and beyond. From a margin basis and a corporate infrastructure basis, as Nate mentioned, most of our operating leverage will come from there. We're going to call it 20-30 basis points per year for the next five years. That'll get you to call it 100-150 basis points, getting us to in and around that 20% on an IFRS basis. We'll continue to find a little bit more room thereafter and maybe a little bit at the practice level as well. The corporate infrastructure today is very much set up for the next five years of growth. You're looking at inflationary type growth on those types of costs while growing kind of top line by 10%+ per year as we've done every year since 2011. We'll continue to see that operating leverage come through. On the back of that, the free cash flow has also been improving your conversion rates now, I think north of 65% from EBITDA. You have launched a dividend recently. How should we be thinking about the use of your free cash flow in the next year in terms of the dividend potential for share buybacks and then the M&A spend? Where does leverage end up on the back of all that? Yeah, if you think about kind of our free cash flow, the motto and the game plan has always been to reinvest that back through our M&A program. That is still the vast majority of what we spend our free cash flow on. The dividend, as you mentioned, Daryl, is going to be roughly 10% of our free cash flow this year and future years, assuming we kind of grow it at the same cadence that we grow our free cash flow by. In terms of share buybacks, we have an NCIB in place. We have had one for a couple of years now. We used it sparingly at the end of 2023 at very low valuations on our share prices. Hopefully, we do not get back to those valuations. There is really not going to be a good time to use them moving forward. In terms of debt paydown, we pay down a little bit of debt towards about a year ago. It is not part of the plan to pay down debt to reduce leverage. The plan is very much to reinvest it back into M&A to increase EBITDA and therefore reducing leverage that way. In terms of what it can be, we are looking at probably about 3.5x by the end of this year, which is a one-turn improvement from roughly 4.5x not that long ago. We will probably operate in that range, somewhere in the threes. We think that is probably the optimal place to be for the pace of growth that we want to see. Okay. In addition to the specialty and sourcing exercise, you've also invested in a partnership with Videa Health and AI in dentistry. Maybe you can just talk about how the rollout's going across your platform. What kind of efficiencies are you seeing day to day? Is this something that your dental partners are asking for, or is this something you're pushing through from an economics perspective? Absolutely. Honestly, in my 10+ years in dentistry and speaking to all the dentists across our network, this is something that they're most excited about. I think this is the biggest change in approach as to how the patient is communicated with, how treatment plans are explained, and ultimately how dentists are going to be trained and mentored through the years. For those that aren't familiar, think of it as when you sit in a dental chair, you get your X-ray. It's going to go through an AI model, which is going to circle up all of your degradation, gum loss, any issues that you might have in your mouth. Through all of the testing that has been done, the dentist is far more accurate in their treatment planning and diagnosis when using the AI model, and they're far more efficient as far as being able to diagnose at a more rapid rate. One of the additional benefits, or frankly, two additional benefits, is from a patient perspective, you have this third-party validation of what's going on. Oftentimes, if it doesn't hurt in your mouth, you generally think that you don't need that treatment. If you're seeing it right there, both from a dentist diagnosis as well as a third-party AI tool, your propensity to accept the treatment is significantly higher. One of the really exciting things about this in dealing with a roster of 2,000+ dentists, now you have the ability to see what is the diagnosis versus the treatment uptake. Is this an issue as it relates to the dentist training, where we should bring them additional mentorship education through our institutes? Is this a coaching opportunity with how to communicate with the patients? It really is going to open the opportunities to elevate clinical care as well as allow the patient to have more visibility as to the treatment plans that are being suggested. Okay. Question I get a lot, and there's a lot of talk about the merits of you being a public company versus privatization. There's been some investor pushback over the years saying, "Hey, you're better off to compound value in the private space." What is it about being a public company? You are effectively the only one around the world that you guys think is your benefit. What is the benefit of being public? The reason why we went public, it's a human capital business. There are two main benefits. One is from an acquisition perspective, having the transparency of value and having the path to liquidity for the vendors. That is something that was top of mind for us in going public. That has proven to be incredibly successful. We are the partner of choice. We continue to win on that basis because, frankly, from a competition perspective, nobody can offer that same technology. From a people perspective, 10,000+ people. We just announced a plan, an RRSP or a 401(k) matching plan for them where we are going to be providing equity for all of our 10,000+ people to match what they put in. Ultimately, that is going to create incredible stickiness and loyalty with all of our people across the country. When we think about it, we're not competing with any other large groups, frankly. We're competing with that dentist across the street or down the street. They don't have this technology and this ability to do so. It is allowing us the opportunity to continue to be the leader and win on acquisitions and growth. It is allowing us to be the leader from an employee brand perspective as well. What hasn't worked out is valuation. That's frankly not something that we can control. We continue to deliver results. We are going to continue to grow in those double digits, putting up margin expansion, growing our free cash flow per share at 15%+ year in and year out. Ultimately, the value will accrue. I think the biggest issue for us is there's no comps. Oftentimes, the market looks at us and wraps us into the dental sector and puts us with the Henry Schein and the Dentsply and the Invisalign, which frankly isn't the right thing to do. Those are in a completely different sector. I think it comes down to education. The private market obviously has a lot more experience and a lot more tenure with businesses like ours. There is a greater understanding. It is really our objective now to continue to educate the public markets on what we do. Okay. Maybe a quick minute on the Canadian Dental Care Plan, the federally funded program that's been put in place over the last, I guess, it's been 12 months now. The last major milestone will be coming through this summer. Just your experience to that and any implications that you would see for dentistry as a whole, if there's any impacts on pricing or how that may work. Yeah, absolutely. I do not expect most people here to be familiar with the Canadian Dental Care Plan, but it is essentially a plan launched by the Liberal government to provide oral health care access to low-income and uninsured Canadians. Roughly speaking, 25% of Canadians do not have some sort of insurance. Obviously, you can cut that further down based on income and other qualifications. It is definitely going to be a program that is additive to the Canadian market, to the Canadian population as a whole. The program was launched about a year ago to certain cohorts. It was 65+ to start, and then it was 18 and under and the disabled population. As of next week, it will be rolled out to the 19-64 population. That will effectively cover all eligible Canadians. We saw a little bit of, we'll call it deferral behavior last year and a little bit of it early this year. Essentially, what happened was the plan was announced without much detail and without much preparation from the government's perspective. Certain patients were confused as to how coverage would work, how much they would get. Also, on a provider side, people were hesitant to enroll into the program because they did not have all the details either. What we saw last year was, we'll call it deferral behavior, whereby patients said, "Okay, the plan is going to kick off for me in X number of weeks or months. I'm going to push my appointment back to that start date so I can get that eligible coverage." Again, short-term fluctuations with the program kind of being fully in place by sometime next week. We expect to see kind of a more return to flattening in terms of same practice volume growth and same practice revenue growth in turn. In terms of kind of the margin profile, the revenue profile, there's no change to us. The way it works is we, and not just our practices, but any practices in Canada have their own fees for what is customary for certain procedures. That is what is being charged. The government will now cover a portion of that. The rest is still paid out of pocket by the actual patient at time of service. Really no changes to working capital, really no changes to the margin profile. It really is maybe a shift of the payer mix. For that, we think it'll be overall moderately accretive to our same practice revenues. Got it. We got a couple of minutes left if there's any questions from the audience. All right. If not, then thank you guys very much.