Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. My name is Michelle, I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the FTG Q2 2023 Analyst Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. There will be a question and answer session following the presentation, instructions will be provided for you at that time on how to enter the question queue. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Please note, this call is being recorded today, Thursday, July 13th, 2023. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Brad Bourne, President and Chief Executive Officer of Firan Technology Group. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Brad Bourne, President and CEO of Firan Technology Group Corporation, or FTG. Also on the call today is Jamie Crichton, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we go any further, I must caution you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on the current expectations and management of the company and inherently involve numerous risks and uncertainties, known and unknown, including economic factors and the company's industry generally. The preceding list is not exhaustive of all possible factors. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual events and results could differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements made by the company. The listener is cautioned to consider these and other factors carefully when making decisions with respect to the company and not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake and has no specific intention to update any forward-looking statements, written or oral, that may be made from time to time by or on its behalf, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. If you have seen our press release, you already know the quarter was great. It was great operationally and great strategically. FTG is playing offense, and it shows in our results. During the quarter, the company invested in technology, invested in new equipment, grew the business organically, received U.S., Canadian, and Ontario government assistance, won some significant new programs, and closed our two previously announced acquisitions. Through all these actions, FTG is strategically deploying our very strong cash balance in ways that will drive increased shareholder returns for the future in both the near term and the long term. Within the second quarter of 2023, FTG accomplished many goals that continued to improve the corporation and position it for the future, including our second quarter bookings of $40.3 million were up 48% over Q2 last year and up 22% over Q1 this year. FTG's second quarter revenues of $34 million were up 52% over Q2 last year as FTG ramps up production to meet customer demand. Revenue included $3.4 million from the newly acquired Circuits sites in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and Haverhill, Massachusetts. FTG achieved net earnings in Q2 2023 of $2.4 million, or $0.10 per share. Net debt on the balance sheet, including government debt, is now $6.4 million, of which is 0.46 times adjusted EBITDA for the trailing twelve-month period ended June 2, 2023. On April 28, 2023, the corporation completed the acquisition of Holiday Circuits, LLC, based in Minnetonka, Minnesota. The business is now operating as FTG Circuits Minnetonka. On April 28, the corporation completed the acquisition of IMI Inc., based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. This business is now operating as FTG Circuits Haverhill. We achieved a 1.19 to 1 book-to-bill ratio for Q2 2023. Our backlog increased to $98 million, compared to $65.5 million at the end of 2022. Backlog as of the end of Q2 includes $18.2 million at the newly acquired sites. FTG added 17 staff in Q2, excluding the acquisitions, to help increase throughput. FTG now employs approximately 680 people across its 9 operating sites. FTG received funding of CAD 1.1 million in the quarter, for a total now of CAD 3.7 million under the Canadian Aerospace Regional Recovery Initiative, or ARRI program. FTG also received half a million CAD as the initial draw on a conditional loan provided by the Ontario government under their Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Competitiveness, or AMIC program. Our end market demand is strong. Air travel continues to rebound. Just last week, it was announced that July 4 travel in the US was the highest one-day travel there ever. When looking at aircraft deliveries, Airbus are working to ramp production and are targeting 60 planes per month in 2023, rising to 65 planes per month by early 2024. They would like to ramp faster to meet their customer demand, but supply chain limitations are constraining their growth. At Boeing, they have plans to ramp their 737 production from 31 aircraft per month earlier this year to 38 per month in the near future, and then to 47 per month by 2024. Both Boeing and Airbus continue to book orders faster than they are delivering aircraft. In the business jet market, Bombardier provided guidance for a 15%-20% increase in 2023. All of this bodes well for us as we look to future demand in 2023 and beyond. I've also looked at results from some key defense contractors, and Lockheed, the largest defense contractor, provided guidance for continued strong sales in 2023, but with negligible growth. Northrop Grumman provided guidance of 3%-5% growth for 2023. The defense market is government-funded, and it appears to be well supported in the near term due to increased geopolitical tensions across the globe. Looking at the longer term, Boeing's most recent 20-year forecast shows long-term industry growth. It continues to show 40% of all new aircraft deliveries going to Asia, as this has been the case in their recent forecast. The business jet market has already seen traffic recover. The recent business jet market forecast from Honeywell similarly predicts growth in this market in the coming years. The simulator market mirrors the end market application. As we always remind everyone about this market, it is lumpy, so large year-to-year variations do occur. As we have said for many years, FTG's goal is to participate in all segments of the aerospace and defense markets as each moves through their independent business cycle. This continues to prove effective. Beyond all this, let me give you a quick update on some key metrics for FTG for Q2 2023. First, as already noted, the leading indicator of our business is our bookings or new orders. First quarter bookings were up 48% over Q2 last year, total backlog at the end of Q2 was $98 million, the highest it has ever been in the history of FTG. The new sites contributed $18 million to FTG's total backlog. I should mention that our bookings are somewhat inflated by the tight supply chain, causing customers to place orders out further than they have historically done. In Q2 2023, sales were $34 million, compared to $22.3 million in Q2 last year. This is a 52% increase. Approximately 15% of the increase is due to the two acquisitions. Approximately 19% of the increase was due to increased simulator product sales. Simulator product sales were up $4.2 million from Q2 last year, and the balance of the growth was approximately 18% and was organic growth across the rest of our business. In our Aerospace business, sales were up 71%, or $5.7 million, compared to Q2 last year. Of this, $4.2 million, or approximately 52% of the growth, was due to the rebound in our simulator business, and the balance was organic growth in other areas. On the Circuits side of our business, sales were up $5.7 million, or 37% on a year-over-year basis. 22% of the growth came from the two acquisitions that closed at the end of April and were part of FTG for the month of May. Overall, at FTG, our top 5 customers accounted for 52.6% of total revenue in the quarter. This compares to 55.6% in the same quarter last year. Well, the percentages in where the companies have changed. Back in the top 5 this year is a simulator customer. Also interesting to note, of our top 10 customers, 6 are customers shared between our Circuits and Aerospace business. We like to see the shared customers, as it means we're maximizing our penetration of these customers by selling both cockpit products and circuit boards. Within the top 10 customers, 2 are simulator companies, again, due to the rebound in the activity in this market. In Q2 2023, 39.2% of our total revenues came from our Aerospace business, compared to 34.1% last year. The aerospace business ramped faster in this quarter. This was substantially offset by the increased revenue from the 2 acquisitions that were on the circuit side of our business for the month of May. I would now like to turn the call over to Jamie, who will summarize our financial results for our second quarter, 2023, and afterwards, I will talk about some key priorities we are working on. Jamie? Thanks, Brad. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to provide some additional detail on our financial performance for Q2. On sales of $34 million, FTG achieved a gross margin of $10 million, or 29.4% in Q2 2023, compared to $5.6 million, or 25.2% on sales of $22.3 million in Q2 last year. Excluding the impact of government assistance included within cost of sales, gross margin dollars increased by $4.1 million on a sales increase of $11.6 million, and the gross margin rate increased by 3.7 margin points. The increase in gross margin dollars is the result of increased operating leverage on higher sales volumes, operational improvements, including pricing actions and favorable foreign exchange rates. The Q2 2023 financial results include the newly acquired sites in Minnetonka and April for a 5-week period from the closing date on April 28th to the end of Q2 2023. Revenue and gross margin from the acquisitions amounted to $3.4 million and $0.4 million, respectively, which is included within the Circuits segment. The sales increase for Q2 2023 also included incremental simulator product sales of $4.2 million. The specific contracts contributing to simulator revenue in Q2 2023 were for repeat part numbers, which are now close to completion. The average foreign exchange rate in Q2 2023 was $0.085, or 6.7% more favorable than Q2 2022, with a positive impact to sales of $1.6 million, with most of that impact also flowing down to gross margin dollars. On a sequential basis, Q2 2023 gross margin dollars, excluding the impact of government assistance, are up $2.8 million and 0.6 margin points relative to Q1 2023, on a sales increase of $9.3 million. From a geographical standpoint, although sales increased in each of our named regions. Sales to U.S.-based customers grew by $10.6 million in Q2 compared to Q2 last year. Our simulator product customers are largely located in the U.S., and the customer base of the newly acquired Circuits sites is U.S.-centric. SG&A expense was $4.4 million, or 13% of sales in Q2 2023, as compared to $3.3 million, or 14.6% of sales in Q2 2022. The current quarter included CAD 246K of SG&A from the new sites for the five-week period and CAD 179K of acquisition-related professional fees. R&D costs for Q2 2023 were CAD 1.6 million, or 4.8% of net sales, compared to CAD 1.6 million, or 7.3% of sales for Q2 2022. R&D efforts include process development in the Circuits segment and efforts to qualify and develop products for future aerospace programs. From a balance sheet perspective, the Canadian dollar strengthened relative to the US dollar by approximately 1.3% from the end of Q1 2023 to the end of Q2. The CAD 203K foreign exchange loss identified in our Q2 operating results, operating expenses, is primarily related to losses on the translation of USD-denominated balance sheet items. EBITDA was $5.3 million for Q2 2023, as compared to $2.1 million for Q2 2022. Adjusted EBITDA, which for Q2 included adjustments for government assistance and acquisition costs, was $5.2 million, or 15.3% of sales, as compared to $2.1 million, or 9.2% of sales in Q2 2022. The acquisitions of the Circuit segments in Minnetonka and Haverhill added approximately $0.3 million to EBITDA for the quarter. On a trailing twelve-month basis, EBITDA was $16.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $13.7 million, for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.0% of trailing twelve-month sales. For Q2 2023, FTG recorded earnings before income taxes of $3.4 million, as compared to $0.5 million for Q2 2022. The increase in pre-tax earnings is driven by strong top-line growth and gross margin expansion. The acquisitions contributed CAD 3.4 million of revenue and CAD 44K of earnings before income taxes. The Q2 2023 income tax provision of CAD 1.0 million, or approximately 29% of pre-tax earnings, is above the estimated statutory income tax rate of 25% and reflects that deferred tax assets on foreign operating losses were not recognized in the quarter. As of Q2 2023, FTG has a net debt position of CAD 6.4 million, as compared to net cash of CAD 16.8 million as of Q2 2022. During the quarter, CAD 26.3 million of cash was used for acquisitions and CAD 2.1 million for capital expenditures. These investments were funded with cash on hand and CAD 4.1 million of new bank debt. FTG also received proceeds of CAD 1.7 million between the ARRI program, sponsored by the Government of Canada, and the AMIC program from the Ontario government. Net debt is 0.46 times adjusted EBITDA for the trailing twelve-month period. Regarding the acquisitions of Holaday Circuits and IMI, FTG's balance sheet reflects an allocation of the purchase price to assets acquired and liabilities assumed as at April 28, 2023, based on management's provisional estimates of fair value. Provisional values used may be adjusted retrospectively in subsequent periods, up to one year following the acquisition date. free cash flow, defined as net cash from operations and investing activities and including effects of foreign exchange, but excluding acquisitions and adjusted for lease liability payments, was negative CAD 0.4 million for Q2 2023, as compared to CAD 0.7 million for Q2 2022. The reduction in free cash flow of $1.1 million is a result of increased levels of working capital and increased CapEx, partially offset by increased earnings. Investment and plant and equipment for Q2 2023 was $2.1 million and will continue at levels above our long-term target of 3% of revenue for the remainder of 2023 and into at least the first half of 2024. As at quarter end, the corporation's primary sources of liquidity totaled $61.9 million, consisting of cash, accounts receivable, contract assets, and inventory. Working capital at Q2 2023 was $34.5 million, as compared to $30.5 million as of the 2022 year end. Accounts receivable days outstanding were 69 as of Q2 close, compared to 62 as of the 2022 year end. Inventory turns were 2.9 as of Q2 close, as compared to 3.7 at the 2022 year-end, and accounts payable days outstanding were 84 as of Q2 close, as compared to 73 for the 2022 year-end. We are entering the second half of 2023 with a record backlog of $98 million, which includes $18 million at the newly acquired sites. Backlog within the Aerospace segment includes a number of newer products, which must be qualified with customers prior to shipment of production quantities. Our complete set of filings, quarterly filings, are now available on SEDAR+. With that, I will turn things back to Brad. Thanks, Jamie. Let me delve into some important items in the quarter and/or for the future performance of FTG. The first half of 2023 has been strong. Our sales ramped nicely. We continue to work hard to ramp further in support of the demand we are seeing. This includes the need to continue to add staff. While hiring is tougher than what it used to be, we are making progress, and we are being aggressive. Looking forward, a key item for us is the integration of IMI and Holaday. For IMI, we acquired them to grow our presence in the RF circuit board market for aerospace and defense application. While they are small, with a historic run rate of about $4 million-$5 million, we like their capabilities. The integration should be relatively straightforward, as we intend to continue to operate it in its current facility with its existing staff. Our focus will be to engage our sales team with them, to find new customers and to grow the business. This is not an overnight process, but one where we can generate incremental margins and profitability to the future benefit of FTG. Going along with this will be some focused CapEx to address a few production constraints to enable future growth. Holaday was a larger acquisition. Their sales were over $30 million before the pandemic. They were hurt by the pandemic like we were. We see the long-term positioning of Holaday to be a source of high-technology circuit boards, similar to our Toronto facility, but with a U.S. footprint. This U.S. footprint is critical, as we will look to grow our share of the U.S.-only advanced circuit board in the defense market. In the short term, we have three priorities as we integrate Holaday into FTG. First, we need to ramp their throughput and sales. While they have seen demand ramp up, they've struggled to add back staff, and this has limited their ability to ramp sales. Since February, they've added 25, 20-25 staff, going from about 150 people to 175. We need to get the new employees trained, and as this is accomplished, we expect to see sales ramp. In May, their throughput was improved, but was around $24 million on an annualized basis, so more work is required to get them back to $30 million and beyond. The second priority is to reduce their material costs. We have identified cost-saving opportunities that can benefit this site, as they are now part of a larger company. It will take some time to achieve the savings, as in some cases, it will require customer approvals and internal engineering efforts. When complete, we expect to achieve savings on the order of $1 million annually. Our third priority is to improve pricing. We believe Holaday has not been sufficiently proactive in adjusting prices as costs went up. We are intending to work with their customers to address this and ensure margins are not squeezed as a result of supplier and labor cost increases. While I'm on the topic of pricing, I've been very impressed with how everyone involved in this at FTG has proactively pursued improved pricing at customers. We have done a good job in avoiding any margin squeeze from increased costs due to the recent period of high inflation. While not specifically pricing, we did benefit from some customer urgent needs for our products in our second quarter that resulted in expedite fees that grew margins on those opportunities. Lastly, just a note of interest from our second quarter, where we shipped cockpit panels for the Orion spacecraft. This is our first program where our cockpit products will be used in outer space. We are proud of our ability to meet the very stringent technical and quality requirements of manned spaceflight. Looking forward into Q3, we see continued strong demand. Our backlog due in the quarter is well over $40 million, including the new sites. Our Q3 includes the summer months of June, July, and August, and our history shows that we lose about a week of production in this quarter due to vacation. One week of production in a 13-week quarter is about 8%. The Canadian dollar has also recently strengthened, which is a headwind on sales, as almost all our revenue is denominated in US dollars. Lastly, our volume of simulator product sales will be less in Q3, and this will result in a less favorable product mix for us overall. Notwithstanding our strong demand and having two new acquisitions for the full three months in Q3, we are not expecting any material growth in our sales in the quarter. Beyond the revenue, I do see a few other headwinds for Q3, including no further ERC funds for any of our US sites, some interest expense rather than interest income, and higher amortization of intangible assets resulting from the acquisitions. Of course, we will have a higher cost base with two additional sites. Beyond Q3, we are expecting to grow. This is resulting from our strong customer demand, progress on ramping throughput at Holaday and all sites, some improved pricing, and some important program wins across the company. A couple of examples of sales successes include winning new cockpit panels for the Boeing 737 program and winning new cockpit assemblies for both Airbus and Boeing aircraft. These and other wins are increasing our market share and could represent $5 million-$10 million in incremental sales in 2024 and beyond. With the more complex geopolitical situation in China, I'm sure there are some concerns about our activities there.... In 2022, both our operations in China had the best sales years ever. Both were profitable, this continued to the first half of 2023. We have, however, repatriated cash back to Canada during 2022, and we brought more back in Q2 2023. In total, we've now brought back about $2.2 million in cash. By doing this, we don't have surplus cash stranded in China, and it reduces our exposure if things deteriorate between China and the West. On a more positive note, in China, the C919 development program achieved CAAC certification last year, and we are finally in a position to see production orders after the 10 years of development. We've received our first production orders in early Q2, valued at about $2.8 million, and all are deliverable in 2023. It's nice to see the few fruits of our 10 years of development efforts on this program. This will benefit our Chinese operations going forward and will be less susceptible to geopolitical uncertainties. Notwithstanding this good news, we are being cautious about our operations in China, as any further increase in tensions between China and other countries could impact our operations there in the future. We do continue to see further acquisition opportunities that could fit with either of our business, but our near-term priority is to integrate our IMI and Holaday acquisitions. With a focus on operational excellence in all parts of FTG, our strong financial performance in Q2 2023, our recent acquisitions, our key sales wins, we are confident we are on a strong long-term growth trajectory. This concludes our presentation. I thank you for your attention. I would now like to open the phones for any questions. Michelle? Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star followed by 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question will come from Nick Corcoran at Acumen Capital. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning. Congratulations on that great quarter. Great. Thank you, Nick. Just a few questions for me. The first is on Holaday. I think you mentioned that annualized sales are about $24 million right now. Pre-pandemic, they were in the mid-$30 million. How long do you expect it to take to ramp production on that facility? Two minor details first. Our throughput was $24 million in May. You know, I do track throughput separately from sales. Anyways, the run rate of throughput was $24 million, and pre-pandemic they were low 30s. I think they peaked at $31 million and change. Having clarified that, you know, to your question of how long is it gonna take? Tough to say. You know, certainly adding the staff back is a critical step, and I think we've done a reasonable job of that, or they've done a reasonable job of that. You know, still got to get people trained. That's gonna be a little bit of a process. Not everyone works out, so, you know, then there's a little bit of churn. You know, at the end of all that, I'd say easily it's more than a year, and hopefully less than 2 to get back to that run rate of 2019. You said there's about 175 staff at that facility right now. What was the peak headcount there? Yeah, it peaked at around CAD 1.90. about 50 more people is what you have to add to get back to the historical- Yeah. Again, I mean, you know, there's a, it's not that simple in that, you know, when they were at 190, I'm gonna say it was 190 well-trained, seasoned staff. You know, that they're trying to add back 40, but, you know, those 40 are gonna be newbies. They're gonna take a little bit of effort to be as good as the guys they had pre-pandemic. That's fair. Then, maybe thinking about the simulator orders, really strong quarter, are you expecting any large orders through the remainder of the year? Not really. I mean, we still have some stuff in backlog, and I honestly didn't look it up. I'm gonna say, I think we have kind of $1 million-$2 million of orders in backlog for the balance of the year, somewhere on that order of magnitude over the 2 quarters. Do you have anything for next fiscal year? Not yet. No. You know, there are some discussions with customers, but nothing's firmed up yet for 2024. Good. maybe going back to the whole corporation as a whole, you added 17 staff in the quarter. How many of those were at Holaday, and how many were at other sites? I mean, the 17 were at the seven legacy FTG sites. That was not counting Holaday and IMI. Good. How much more hiring do you think you have to do in upcoming quarters? I need to think about that one a little bit. It is probably on the order about that same amount again in the next quarter or so. Do you still see labor were the main bottlenecks to increase production? Yeah, I'd say first bottleneck or first challenge is labor and ramping things up. Now, in some cases, we're still seeing our own supply chain challenges or longer lead times on some materials, particularly electronic components. Those are the top two. The last question for me, were there any supply chain constraints in the quarter that you think impacts production? For sure there were. I'm not sure. You know, so, you know, there were some constraints in Q1 that probably pushed some revenue into Q2, and there's no doubt there were some constraints in Q2 that pushed revenue into Q3. Is it's a kind of a wash maybe, but there's still definitely constraints that delay deliveries. Thanks. That's great color. That's all for me. Okay, thanks, Nick. Your next question comes from Paul Steepe, a private investor. Please go ahead. Morning. Thanks, Brad. Great quarter. Thank you. The question, I guess, is, if we think out maybe a year or two from now in terms of where you'd want to deploy capital and what you'd be looking for to add incrementally to M&A, and then maybe as a follow-up, could you talk a little bit about the potential for you to do more in the space area or add parts to the mix on the space side? Thanks, guys. Sure. Yeah, I've been involved in the space business off and on in my career for a long time. You know, it's an interesting market, but it's not a high volume market. You know, I'll give you my simple example from Q2. You know, we're involved in Orion spacecraft. You know, pretty exciting stuff for sure. Pretty impressive what we're doing. We shipped, or our order was for 14 panels. Across FTG, I'm probably doing, I don't know, close to 100 panels a day for aircraft. You know, it's an interesting market. Again, proud to be part of it, but is it gonna be a huge chunk, you know, a huge percentage of our revenue going forward? Not really. You know, we'll participate in it. We will take credit for the cool things we're doing, but it's not gonna drive my revenue for the future. Sorry, I'm gonna slide one last one in. Sure. How about certifying the facility for Holaday once you get it up and obviously focus near term on getting more staff in, but in terms of adding new, maybe U.S. defense programs into the facility, how should we think about that maybe out in the, thinking more like the 2025, 2026 timeframe? Thank you. Right. No, it's a good question, you know, here's the way I look at Holaday right now. In terms of capability, very similar to the Toronto facility. Both are very capable. Both can do high-end, advanced technology circuit boards. Both have pretty solid approvals from the US Department of Defense, because you need to be approved by technology. That's good. For sure, our Toronto facility has a wider customer base than Holaday, I guess, you know, that's where I see an opportunity. I mentioned it for IMI, I really should have mentioned it for Holaday as well, that, you know, there's a number of customers where we're engaged, and again, at the high end from Toronto, there's a segment of the demand we cannot address because we're not in the US. That's where Holaday comes in. We're gonna need some customer approvals. I don't think we need any more government approvals, you know, with some customer approvals and working with our sales team, I think we can grow our share of the U.S. defense market for product that really needs to be manufactured in the U.S. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one now. There are no further questions, I will turn the conference back to Mr. Brad Bourne for any closing remarks. Thank you. A replay of the call will be available until September 13th, 2023, at the numbers listed on the press release. The replay will also be available on our website in a few days. I thank you all for your interest and participation. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for this morning. We would like to thank you all for participating and ask you to please disconnect your lines.