Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the GDI Integrated Facility Services Inc. first quarter 2021 results conference call. At this time, note that all participant lines are in a listen-only mode, but following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require muted assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also, be advised that this call is being recorded on Friday, May 7th, 2021. I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stéphane Lavigne. Please go ahead. [Non-English content]. Thank you. Good morning, all. Welcome to GDI's conference call to discuss our results for the first quarter of fiscal 2021. My name is Stéphane Lavigne. I'm Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of GDI. I am with Claude Bigras, President and CEO of GDI, and David Hinchey, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development. Before we begin, I would like to make you aware that this call contains forward-looking information, and we ask listeners to refer to the full description of the forward-looking safe harbor provision that is fully described at the beginning in the management and discussion analysis file on SEDAR last night. I will begin the call with an overview of GDI's financial results for the first quarter of 2021, and I will then invite Claude to provide his comments on the business. In the first quarter, GDI recorded revenue of CAD 383.6 million, an increase of CAD 28.7 million or 8.1% over Q1 of last year, including a negative organic growth of 0.7% due to the full or partial closure of certain client facilities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. We recorded an Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 33.5 million in the quarter, an increase of CAD 13.5 million or 67.2% over Q1 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA was positively impacted by additional services delivered to existing and new clients whose facilities remain open or partially open during the pandemic. Moving to our business segment. The Janitorial Canada business recorded revenue of CAD 132.9 million in Q1, a decrease of CAD 5.3 million or 3.8% compared to the first quarter of 2020. This decrease is due to the negative effects of the COVID-19. However, this segment reported Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 22 million, compared to CAD 9.4 million in the first quarter of 2020, representing a margin of 16.4% compared to 6.7% last year. Our Janitorial USA business recorded revenue of CAD 79.9 million in Q1, a decrease of CAD 3.3 million compared to Q1 2020 due to the depreciation of the U.S. dollar in relation to the Canadian dollar, but the segment delivered 1.9% of organic growth in Q1. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 25.9% to CAD 7.7 million, or 9.7% of revenue, compared to CAD 6.1 million, or 7.4% of revenue in the first quarter of 2020. Our Technical Services segment recorded revenue of CAD 156.2 million, an increase of CAD 34.6 million or 28.4% over Q1 of 2020, with the full amount of revenue growth coming from acquisitions, while organic decline was limited to 1.4%, which was COVID-19 related. Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 6.3 million and Adjusted EBITDA margin of 4%, which is in line with historical first quarter performance, which is seasonally the business' weakest quarter. Finally, our Complementary Services segment reported revenue of CAD 17.1 million in Q1, an increase of 3.1% compared to Q1 of 2020, but Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 0.8 million compared to CAD 1.4 million in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of CAD 600,000 as a result of the low occupancy and different product mix. I would like now to turn the call to Claude, who will provide further comments on GDI's performance during the quarter. Thank you, Stéphane. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking the time to participate in our earnings call. I'm very pleased with GDI's performance in the first quarter of 2021. The COVID pandemic continued to affect the company positively during the quarter. All our business units continued to work on the front lines throughout fighting the virus, doing everything that they could to provide our clients with the essential services they need to keep their facilities safe and virus-free. We expect that as long as the COVID-19 virus remains a risk to our society, our cleaning business will continue to perform as our client looks to GDI for expertise and enhanced support to keep their facilities safe. As GDI has demonstrated since the beginning of the pandemic, we have the ability to implement many actions to manage costs, mitigate business disruption, protect our employees, and ensure that we are able to provide our clients with the essential services they need to keep their facilities safe. Turning to our business units. Our Canadian janitorial business performed very well during the quarter, increasing its Adjusted EBITDA by 135% over Q1 of last year. While several cleaning service clients were operating their facility at lower than normal capacity levels, many clients required additional services and specialty services due to the pandemic, including, for example, higher frequency cleaning and disinfection services. Our Canadian business has been holding despite the resurgence of the pandemic in most large markets that began at the end of the quarter. We also benefited from one less day of service in this quarter. Our janitorial business also performed well during Q1, delivering a 25.9% increase in Adjusted EBITDA and an organic revenue growth of 1.9%. As our Canadian business, many of our Janitorial USA clients also required additional COVID-related services. However, to a lesser degree due to different and mixed markets. Given the widespread availability of the different COVID vaccines in the U.S. market, we expect the pace of regional economic reopening and facility reoccupying to be faster than that of Canada. In fact, in a number of regions, we already have begun to see a reduction in government restrictions and a gradual reopening of facilities. I am very proud of the performance of our cleaning business during the COVID pandemic. As one of the largest and the leading commercial cleaning service provider in North America, our janitorial segment took a leadership position in the industry in advising clients on the various processes and procedures to implement and the products to use to keep their facility clean and mitigate the risk of virus spread. I feel that our efforts during the pandemic have helped to better differentiate GDI in the marketplace and serve to solidify our value proposition to clients and strengthen our competitive position. Ainsworth, our Technical Services segment, has been the GDI business that was the most impacted by COVID-19. The business has been progressively improving since the pandemic low experienced during the second quarter of 2020. Ainsworth has a good start to the year with an EBITDA margin of 4%, which is seasonally the weakest quarter and despite the resurgence of COVID in most of Canada. EBITDA margin was in line with historic norms. We are seeing an improvement in service call volumes. Project work is beginning to come back on stream. Our sales team is very active, and our win rate ratio is strong. While an onset of COVID proved to be a headwind for Ainsworth business, we are optimistic that as COVID recedes, a tailwind will follow as building owners and managers begin to focus on air quality in their facility as the building gets reoccupied. Ainsworth is both the largest commercial HVAC service business in Canada and the largest system-agnostic building automation service in Canada, and these are the two trades that should benefit most from a shift in focus to air quality. We continue to be very excited by our acquisition of BPAC Group on January 1st of this year. Together, BP and Ainsworth are now a major building system and multi-trade facility service provider in the northeast of the U.S.A. We have begun consolidating Ainsworth U.S. operations under the BP management team. We are now focusing on growing this platform alongside our janitorial service platform in the U.S. market, with a goal of making GDI a true one-stop shop for both today's and tomorrow's buildings in the midwestern and northeastern United States. Superior Solutions, our product manufacturing and distribution business, recorded a decrease in Adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. While this segment continued to experience demand on personal protective equipment, it is operating in a more balanced supply-demand environment than was experienced on the onset of the pandemic. Because of the significantly reduced occupancy rate we saw in Canada in Q1, the business experienced a decrease in demand for day-to-day cleaning supplies like tissues and toilet paper. Due to the exceptional performance GDI has delivered since the beginning of the pandemic, our balance sheet is stronger than ever, and our leverage ratios are at an all-time low, and we are in a solid financial position. We continue to focus on our growth through acquisition strategy. Deal flow has returned to pre-COVID levels, and our financial strength should enable us to capitalize on strategic opportunities as they arise. I would like to finish by thanking each one of our dedicated employees and staff who worked tirelessly on the front line in this pandemic. Our clients were depending on us to keep them safe, and all of you have risen to the occasion. I am extremely proud to see how our entire team has been stepping up to the challenge. That concludes my remarks, I will ask now the operator to open the lines to analysts for questions. Thank you, Mr. Bigras. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Should you decide to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift the handset before you press any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have any questions. [Non-English content]. Your first question will be from John Zamparo at CIBC. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, John. I wonder if you could start by characterizing the quarter from the perspective of U.S. versus Canada? What I mean by that is, when you look at more reopened parts of the continent, are you seeing any shift from customers towards more normal levels of recurring services rather than the enhanced recurring or one-time disinfecting services? Yeah. Well, John, you're absolutely right. As business reopens, building gets reoccupied, I think we are seeing a trend towards better normality. I would qualify it probably as a new normality. It would be very unwise for building owners just to revert to pre-pandemic approach to cleaning. I think what we will see is a more in-depth approach to cleaning and sanitation. Yes, customers will probably spend less globally on extra services. I think they will resume into more in-depth cleaning approach to their day-to-day services. Hopefully, this is giving you a little bit of the flavor. Yes, that's helpful. Thank you. Then one more. Claude, you spoke a bit about the potential for a tailwind from increased focus on air quality and filtration upgrades. Yes. I'd like to get a sense of how often you're having these conversations with customers, but also how material are these types of jobs and how profitable are they versus the rest of the Technical Services group? Is there any recurring element to that business as well? Okay. What we are seeing, as everybody is learning from the pandemic, now the science is telling us that, yes, the two-meter distance resolved what we call the high molecular structures of I don't know how to say that in English, but the droplets. We are realizing that the small particles flow in the air and can be a very strong carrier of the virus through ventilation systems. Customers now, they have to turn into how they can provide a better indoor air quality in their building. It means UV disinfection systems, air generating systems, stronger filtering systems, improving of their equipment. Like you said, it won't make the building spend gazillions of dollars, but these are, I would say, very interesting margin projects. Not being huge by themselves, but they can be rewarding project on the bottom line. This is what we're focusing on in the sense that our base business will be strong, our trade business and projects are strong, but we are also pushing on those enhanced services that are good margin built-ups in the business. You understand what I'm saying? It's not a volume play. It's a margin play with those, and also it enables us to acquire new clients in the process. Understood. That's great. That's very helpful. I'll pass it on. Thank you. Thank you. Next question will be from Michael Dumais at Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys. Fantastic quarter. Good morning, Mr. Michael. Hey. I think most of us would have assumed that you hit the high watermark for margins in the Janitorial Canada business last year, that was up again in Q1. You did mention the benefit of the extra day. I just want to get a sense for how much that played in and what else drove the margin upside. Listen, to be very honest, when you put the extra day, the pandemic, and the building occupancy, I cannot give you a real scientific number. I would presume probably 2%-3%. Okay. Maybe just flipping back to the Technical Services. It's been a few quarters now where site restrictions have deferred work, but at the same time, it sounds like to me, that COVID has increased the overall demand for services. At some point, I presume you'll make a transition from growing the backlog to executing the backlog. I guess the question is, are you approaching that point? Do you feel comfortable that that could be a 2021 transition? You know what? I'm not sure I fully capture your question, Michael. You're talking about the backlog at Ainsworth? Yeah. It seems like to me, your customers have desire for more and more work. Yeah. There are restriction sites that prevent your technicians from doing that work. At some point, I would presume that we would see elevated levels of sales and execution. I just wonder if it is in 2021. I understand. Okay. Yes, you're right. The restrictions and sometimes disable us to execute on the projects. Now what we see is we more or less realize the expected number of billable hours every month. We see that the business is resuming to a sustainable number of hour per periods. As building reopens and everything, for sure, lifting the restriction would enable us to probably execute more on our project backlog, which will generate more monthly revenues. Backlog is good, but we have to turn it into money. That's the point of backlog. Okay, great. Then maybe if I can slip in one extra question. Since the start of the pandemic, I've noticed you haven't closed on a janitorial acquisition. Given the performance of your business in the last few quarters, I wonder if it's fair to assume that maybe seller expectations have increased, and given the moving parts, it may be harder to close a deal. Am I overthinking it or? No. This occupies my thoughts, my friend. You know what? The problem is uncertainty. Everybody deals with uncertainty. We expect positive long-term effect. Some people see huge effect. Some people expect a return to normal. We are dealing in the janitorial and cleaning sites, and this affects for sure our acquisition strategy is we're dealing with a lot of uncertainty. It's hard to price business when there's the uncertainty, what can play positively or negatively into our pricing methodology. You know what? At this time, we are very cautious on how we price our businesses. What we expect is the deal flow is strong. As we're getting there, we will continue to develop there. Yes, uncertainty has a certain impact on our janitorial acquisitions. Okay. I'm glad that was an answer to the question. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question will be from Maggie MacDougall at Stifel. Please go ahead. Good morning. Maggie. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Very good. Good. I wanted to ask a little bit about how things have been going in Canada. In Toronto, it feels like we've been in lockdown for a really long time now. All over the country, there's new restrictions being put in place. It's always a little difficult to kind of understand exactly how this might impact occupancy in buildings because, for example, our office is closed and we're being told to work from home here. I know that other professional services firms are open, with some employees going in. Could you just give us a bit of general commentary around how things are shaping up in Q2 with regards to trends for occupancy, in your experience, and if that's much different than what we saw last year this time when everybody went into a really strict lockdown? Yes. Maggie, you know what? Each regions are acting differently. We have to keep that in mind. It's not a uniformity across the board. That's one thing. Secondly, I think that Q2 is behaving a little bit, I would say, towards what we see is we see some overstock in the market. We don't see much reopening. We see also that retail is kind of slowing down a little bit on the demand. I think what we're going to see is reopening. Again, you know what? My guess is as good as the 300 million specialists we have in Canada and in the U.S., but I would say that I believe that we will see progressive reopening at the tail of Q3 and into Q4. I think this is where it's going to globally be re-happening, Universities, buildings. If I had to put a bet, I would say end of Q3 and Q4, we should see a kind of a coming back to a new normal. In your discussions with your property managers, if you talk about I'm sure people are making plans for that, and maybe the timing is not quite known yet. When you talk to these property managers to help them with their planning, what are they saying? Because it seems to me like we're going to be in a situation where we'll have some good amount of the population vaccinated. I don't know if it's 50% or 40% or something like that, but not quite at a level where we can really loosen up on the public health practices like the mask wearing and the sanitization and all of that stuff to keep the unvaccinated population protected. Has that line of thought played into any of your discussions? Perhaps you could just share a little bit about how those property managers are planning for the future. Okay. Well, I think it's very interesting because it's a discussion that we entertain every day with our stakeholders. I think what's important for us to convey to our clients is, the worst thing that could happen is even with the vaccines, that the commercial business environment become a vector of pandemics because the sanitation measures has been soft and too much and too quick. I think re-occupancy is getting back to normal. I think that office internal structures will be modified. I would say the densification of occupation and buildings will go back to a lesser level as people will live with a certain distanciation. I think there was a great learning in this pandemic. Yes, there will be probably more work from home, but I think it will be offset with a better space management. At the end of the day, again, is we need to keep enhanced measures in place in order to make sure that we provide a safe office environment. This is the ticket. If people don't feel safe at the office, they will not engage. This is very important. I don't want us to look like we are salesmen, but there's a reality. We need to work with our client to understand that the cleaning for appearance no longer applies. It's cleaning for health. This is the new tomorrow. This is our engagement with our business, is to educate and provide this new level of cleaning for health. You know what? I don't want to be looking too holistic, but did I express it properly so it's understood? Yes, that was excellent. Thank you very much. I will pass the line over. Thank you. Next question will be from Frederic Tremblay, Desjardins. Please go ahead. [Non-English content], Mr. Frederic. Hello. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one for me is on air quality. I just want to confirm that, are you able to offer the SmartIAQ product within the BP network, or that's mostly a Canadian offering for now? Well, we can offer it everywhere. You know what? It's MERV- 13 filtration systems. It's UV filtration systems. It's a more enhanced filter rotation and change. You know what? It's not rocket science. It's just to be focused on renewing air and managing the quality of the airflow. It's applicable everywhere. Okay, great. Just moving to Janitorial. Last quarter, you talked about some customers issuing RFPs with enhanced services within the RFP. Is that something that you're continuing to see in recent weeks? If so, what's sort of the impact, I guess, on future quarters in terms of margin profile for the Janitorial segment, as we maybe we're gradually moving below the 13%-16% margin we've seen in Janitorial Canada? Yeah Perhaps staying above where we were pre-COVID-19. Just your thoughts on that would be appreciated. Well, listen, I think it's very prudent margins like we saw in Canada last quarter, to be very honest, I would not promote that this is the one going forward. I think it was very exceptional. It was very rewarding, Q1 of 2021. Like you said, there was the extra day. There was a certain level of service. It was the after holiday service. Retailer were involved into providing a lot of asking a lot of demand, which is now getting softer. This being said, what we should expect, I think going forward is, again, I'm just restating that we have to make sure that our clients understand the service dynamic going forward. We have to make sure our clients understand that there is a process to have in place when you do disinfection. Demand for one-time disinfections, we probably see that it will be reduced, or it will go to a better, I would say, lesser service, lesser amount. Enhanced services will kick in. Probably the revenues will get back to their more regular trend, but with, I would say, a twist of margin but a sustainable twist in revenue going forward. That's clear. Thank you clear. Thank you Because of enhanced services. Yeah. Understood. Perfect. More sustainable margin alongside, we won't see those big peaks as we saw during the pandemic. Mind you, in what, Frederic? Next year, the virus resurge, we're back at square one. Yeah, for sure. Great. Last question for me, just on M&A. You spoke about the environment for janitorial and your thoughts there. Just curious on the Technical Services side, especially in the U.S. You mentioned that the integration of BP is going well. I guess, does that mean you have a strong appetite or stronger appetite for U.S. Technical Services acquisition? Absolutely. Again, Frederic, I think I said it many times, density is a key to our business. Yes, now we have a strong platform in one of the largest markets in the world, and we are investing on it. We are integrating our business of the other parenting business within it, and our intention is to grow our technical multi-trade, and building automation system platform. Absolutely. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. Your next question will be from Zachary Evershed at National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Good morning, Mr. Zachary. Good morning, Mr. Bigras. Just a quick one from me, building on Frederic's question here. Looking across your business segments and your geographies, could you maybe rank for us your interest in the acquisition opportunities there? Also give us just a bit of color on the pipeline of targets and maybe the pace at which you expect to be able to deploy your very strong balance sheet. That's the good news. At least we have the means for our ambitions. That's a good start. Secondly, as I said earlier, on the janitorial side, we remain prudent, because we need to cope with the level of uncertainty. This is one point. On the technical side, we continue to entertain discussion with many players. We have a fairly sizable pipeline, if you can allow me to say that. Again, you know what? We have to find the right business fix. Fit, I'm sorry, not fix, but fit. We have to pay the right price. This is our challenge. We have to make sure that we execute on our strategy, but the idea is not to do absolutely transaction. It's to do the right transactions. That's helpful. Thanks. Congrats on the quarter. I'll turn it over. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. At this time, Mr. Bigras, we have no further questions. Please proceed. Thank you very much. In closing, I want to thank you again for being on our earnings calls. Just to recap is we're very happy with our results. We're still working very hard. You know what? This pandemic period, people are dedicated towards it. We want to make sure that we develop and offer our clients a sustainable solution going forward. At the end of the day, I think it'll be all positive for our business and our business impact. We remain very focused on the business. Hopefully, you know what? As building reopens and everything, we will be able to be at the forefront of supporting our clients. Thank you again. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude the conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. At this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a good weekend.