Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Park Lawn Corporation fourth quarter year-end 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Jennifer Hay, General Counsel at Park Lawn. Ma'am, the floor is yours. Thank you, Holly, and good morning, everybody. This is Jennifer Hay, and I'm General Counsel at Park Lawn. Thank you for joining us on today's fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available after the call. Please be aware that certain information discussed today is forward-looking in nature. Any such information is subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please see our public filings for more information regarding forward-looking statements. During the call, we will reference non-IFRS financial measures. Although we believe these measures provide useful supplemental information about our financial performance, they are not recognized measures and do not have standardized meanings under IFRS. Please see our public filings for additional information regarding our non-IFRS financial measures, including for reconciliation to the nearest IFRS measures. I will now hand the call over to Park Lawn CEO, Brad Green, to open our discussion today. Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. In addition to Jennifer, with me on our call today is our CFO, Dan Millett. We had a solid fourth quarter that capped yet another strong financial year of potential performance and growth. During Q4, we experienced revenue growth of 10% to roughly CAD $99.5 million over a tough comparable quarter from 2020, and for the full year, saw revenue growth over 2020 of 14% to approximately CAD $ 369.5 million, despite significant foreign exchange headwinds year over year. As we continue to see a lasting effect of COVID-19 in the communities we serve, revenue growth from our comparable businesses during the quarter grew modestly by 0.7% and resulted in a 10.4% increase from the prior year when excluding the foreign exchange headwinds. Also for the quarter, Park Lawn achieved a 4% increase year-over-year in Adjusted EBITDA to CAD $ 25.1 million at an approximate 25.3% margin. For the fiscal year 2021, we saw a 20% increase in Adjusted EBITDA to CAD $ 95.6 million and a 25.9% margin. As we expected, we saw a decrease in comparable business call volume in the quarter relative to the COVID-impacted Q4 2020. However, we continue to see the average revenue per call increase as our client families have continued to be very interested in celebrating and memorializing their loved ones after being told that they could not do so during the pandemic restrictions. Year-over-year in our comparable businesses, the average revenue per call grew by approximately 9%. From the cemetery perspective, the pandemic continued to act as a significant triggering event, supporting strong pre-need sales activity. As we've mentioned previously, we expect that the triggering effect will continue to positively impact pre-need sales as the pandemic will not be forgotten anytime soon. Turning to acquisition, to put it bluntly, we had both a very successful quarter and year in executing our growth strategy. During the fourth quarter, we closed on five businesses, which added nine funeral homes, three cemeteries, and one on-site to our existing portfolio. Significantly, the Ingram business that we closed in December provides us entry into another new high-growth market in Georgia. Throughout the year, we completed a total of 10 acquisitions, deploying approximately US $125.7 million. The combined transactions represent a total of 6,306 calls, 1,229 interments, coming from 26 standalone funeral homes, seven standalone cemeteries and four on-sites. All of these acquisitions were added within our range of previously stated multiples. I'd now like to turn the call over to Dan, who will review our Q4 financial results in more detail. Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. You'll find a detailed breakdown of our fourth quarter results in our financial statements in MD&A, which are available on our website and on SEDAR. My comments this morning will focus on the operating results for the fourth quarter. As Brad mentioned, Q4 of 2020 was anticipated to be and was a tough comparable for Q4 2021. Despite this, we were still able to achieve total net revenue growth of approximately 10.1% over the quarter from CAD $90.4 million-CAD $ 99.5 million while continuing to experience a foreign exchange headwind of approximately 3% due to the appreciation of the Canadian dollar. As we previously shared, approximately 90% of our revenue is generated from our US businesses, so this headwind can have a meaningful effect on our results. However, beginning in 2022, we are transitioning to a US dollar reporting currency, which will help reduce the volatility experienced from foreign exchange differences. Revenue growth from our comparable businesses grew modestly at 0.7% year-over-year, excluding the foreign exchange headwind, but decreased by 2.5% when accounting for the foreign exchange. Impacting this growth was three mausoleums delivered in Q4 2020, providing approximately $3.6 million of revenue at a very high margin, and no mausoleums were delivered in Q4 2021. However, looking forward, as we see the death rate continue to be less impacted by COVID and COVID-related deaths, we expect the growth in our comparable businesses to normalize further into 2022. Also, during the quarter, the company's operating expenses, including general and administrative, advertising and selling, and maintenance expenses, increased by approximately CAD $ 5.6 million for the three-month period ended December 31, 2021 over the same period in 2020. This increase is primarily the result of acquired operations, partly offset by the impact of foreign exchange. As a result of another quarter of exceptional sales and a commitment to operations, our net earnings attributable to PLC shareholders for Q4 2021 was approximately CAD $ 8.96 million, or CAD 0.26 per share, compared to CAD $ 6.26 million, or CAD 0.21 per share for Q4 2020, representing a 43% increase in the aggregate. Furthermore, the adjusted net earnings attributable to PLC shareholders for the fourth quarter of this year was approximately CAD $ 12.8 million or CAD 0.37 per share compared to CAD $ 10.5 million, or CAD 0.35 per share in Q4 2020. This represents an increase of approximately 22% in adjusted net earnings. The net earnings and adjusted net earnings on a per share basis were impacted by the equity raise completed in September of the year as approximately 4.5 million more shares were outstanding on a diluted basis year-over-year. As Park Lawn continues to deploy its equity into accretive acquisitions, we expect to see further growth in our per share metrics. Turning now to the balance sheet. We ended the year with approximately CAD $110 million drawn on our revolving credit facility, other debt of approximately CAD $17 million, finance leases of approximately CAD $6 million, and cash on hand of approximately CAD $26 million. Excluding our debentures, our net debt was approximately CAD $107 million at December 31, 2021. At the end of December, our leverage ratio was approximately 0.98 times based on the terms of our credit facility and approximately 1.78 times including our outstanding debentures. As previously indicated, as we move through the upcoming quarters and continue to expand our business through acquisition activity, we expect the leverage ratio to gradually increase. We estimate our current liquidity is in excess of CAD $200 million, which is readily available to be deployed in ongoing and future organic and acquisition growth initiatives. Finally, as we close out 2021, I want to highlight again that beginning January 1, 2022, we have transitioned to a US dollar financial presentation currency to minimize some of the impact that our businesses sustain from foreign exchange risk. Starting with our next quarter, Q1 2022, we'll be reporting in USD. I will now turn the call back to Brad for some closing comments regarding what you can expect as we move into 2022 and beyond. Thanks, Dan. As you know, in 2018, we announced a long-term aspirational goal of achieving CAD 100 million, which equates to about US $79 million in pro forma Adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2022. Although we have just started 2022, before we consider any impact of potential acquisitions this year, we expect this number will be exceeded. We began to anticipate this would be the case in early 2021, as did many of you listening on the phone. As a result, we began an extensive internal strategic process in the early part of 2021 that focused on our goals beyond 2022. I'm certainly glad that we did, because we started getting more and more questions on that subject as 2021 drew to a close. As a result of this strategic process, we have a new long-term aspirational target to achieve by the end of 2026, which is as follows. Park Lawn expects that it will achieve a total of US $150 million of pro forma Adjusted EBITDA, translating into Adjusted Net Earnings of $2 per share. Before I go through how we plan to get there, I think it's important to again emphasize that we are changing our currency presentation for 2022, as Dan just mentioned. We are announcing this aspirational target in US dollars, not Canadian dollars, which is different than our 2018 goal. In US dollars, we plan to go from $79 million- $150 million in pro forma Adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2026. How do we plan to reach this new five-year aspirational goal? We know where we came from, and we know how we got here, so we know what it will take to reach our new goal. First, as a premier operating company of funeral and cemetery businesses, we will continue to capitalize on our ongoing operational improvements in both our existing and acquired businesses to continue revenue growth and margin expansion. Second, we expect operational and financial efficiencies through the full implementation, deployment, and integration of our proprietary industry software system. Third, our organic growth opportunities will continue to play a part in these goals, such as continuing to identify on-site opportunities at existing cemeteries, like you can see with our completed on-site in Houston, our almost completed Westminster project in Toronto, or what we've just begun at Waco Memorial Park, one of our Texas properties. Fourth, through the expansion and addition of new inventory at our existing cemeteries, which will include things like new mausoleums, new permanent placement offerings for cremated remains, and further development and expansion of gardens for traditional burials or private estate. Finally, and probably the most important, we fully expect to continue to pursue acquisition opportunities in high-growth markets in both the US and Canada. As you've seen in the past few years, our focus has transitioned to high-performing businesses in strategic markets, as these businesses tend to not only integrate more quickly but are generally more accretive. You've also seen us focus on strategic tuck-in opportunities where the addition of a new rooftop offers considerable benefits. We expect to continue with the pace of US $75 million-US $125 million in acquisitions per year, depending on the opportunities. We are excited about what's to come as we look into 2022 and beyond. Finally, I want to finish our call today by commending our teams for their extraordinary performance in all respects, especially during the last two years in the most unusual and challenging of times. Through their hard work, dedication, and achievement, we as a company have been able to deliver to our shareholders tremendous growth and continued opportunity since the end of June 2018. Since that time, we've delivered an increase of over 300% in Adjusted EBITDA and an increase in Adjusted Net Earnings per share of 119%. As we have repeatedly stated, we are not a consolidator but an operator of funeral homes and cemetery businesses that grows through acquisitions. It is this vision, which is shared by our entire team, that makes us different, makes us successful, and will continue to make us successful as we look towards 2026. That concludes our prepared remarks, and I will now turn it over to the operator for any questions. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is coming from George Doumet. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question. Yeah, guys, good morning. I just wanted to ask you a little bit about your long-term aspirational EBITDA guidance of 150 US. It looks like it implies about 15% CAGR. Should we assume that a third of that maybe, Brad, is organic and two-thirds of it is M&A kind of in line with what you've been doing? Yeah, George, truth be told, I think a little bit more right now would be on the acquisition side. You know, as we've gotten a lot of our existing businesses, made improvements to those businesses, and as we, in the near term, feel a little bit of effect from COVID, you know, I think that's going to be a little bit more weighted to the acquisitions. But kind of as we get further along in our goal, I think that will start to flip maybe a little bit closer to what you're seeing as we see, you know, some of the COVID stuff eliminate and, you know, we get into some of that boomer generation. Okay. That's probably a good segue for, I guess, my next question. Maybe looking specifically for 2022, do you guys think you can actually maybe grow organically at all? I ask that because your US competitors seem to have guided for quite a bit of revenue decline in 2022, so I'm just wondering what you guys are thinking organically speaking. Yeah, George, I think our kind of guidance would be the same as we suggested in the end of the Q4 last year. That is we came into this year expecting pretty much that with the comps that we had, we would have pretty much flat organic growth. We knew that we would grow by acquisition or thought we would grow by acquisition. We basically said that compared to our the other folks that are publicly traded out there, that we felt that we would grow no matter what the impact of COVID was. I guess you're referring to FDI came out at that same time last year, and they had a much different opinion on what they saw the market was going to do. They were modeling funeral volume going down. They were modeling funeral averages going down. They thought people would be reluctant to gather in large groups. These were all things that they said during their conference call this time last year. We just took a different approach. I said during our conference call at this exact time last year in response to a question from Scott Fromson that we respect those guys and understand that they are modeling and they're smart, but we took a different approach. We're doing it again this year, the same way. They're seeing a significant pullback because they believe that the deaths that occurred during the pandemic will all be pulled forward into 2022. We just don't believe that's the case. We believe it'll be spread out more than that. We'll say the same thing that we did last year. We expect modest organic growth because some of our tougher comparables, you just saw one, we'll have another one in Q1 of 2022, and then it feels like things are getting back to normal for us. We'll see some organic growth, but certainly not a pullback. We got it right this year. Maybe our competitors will get it right this year. Us, we feel pretty strong about that answer. All right. Appreciate your comments. Thank you, guys. Your next question is coming from Irene Nattel. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question. Good morning, everyone. RBC Capital Markets. I just want to continue the discussion around the 2026 guidance. I'm trying to kind of triangulate the CAD 75-125 million in M&A with the CAD two dollars in EPS and the CAD 150 million in EBITDA. It kind of seems to us that at sort of the lower end, you can get to the CAD 150 million, but it kind of looks like maybe at the higher end, you're anticipating funding some from incremental equity. Could you walk us through how you're thinking about all of that? Yeah, I'll start the answer, and then Dan can probably add some color when it comes to what the capital stack might look like. This is about as honest as we and transparent as we can be, Irene, which we do frequently. We don't know who's gonna be for sale in which year, and we don't know exactly where that will fall. It's very possible that you could see a year where we would have CAD $50 million in acquisitions and follow it up by a year that we would have CAD$ 250 million in acquisitions. Or we could hit somewhere in that middle range, or somewhere between CAD $75 million-CAD $150 million. We could or CAD $125 million. We could kind of hit that range every year for five years because I'm not sure who's gonna come up when. Dan can add a little bit more color to this, but if it's spread out over the time, we believe that we can reach this goal without raising any additional equity. Obviously, if something happens more quickly, that might change that theory, or we might go and raise the money in some different manner. Right now, we believe that if it comes to us in a steady state, kind of like what you saw in 2021, we can finance this without raising additional equity. Yeah, Irene, I concur with Brad. You know, it all depends on what comes when. You know, as I've always said, you know, we're constantly looking at our capital stack. We know we have the ability to use more debt right now, so it's all a function of what's out there at any given point in time. That is incredibly helpful. Thank you. I just wanna ask about something else, which is, I noticed there's no return metrics that are included in these financial targets. As you and the board were thinking this through, can you talk about your view on ROIC and improving ROIC on a go-forward basis? Yeah, Irene, it's Dan again. You know, ROIC is something we are continuing to think about, we are continuing to look at. Simply put, you know, it's primarily a function of organic growth. You know, our return on equity is gonna be more of a function on how we can grow. As we just kind of talked about, we think we can use a lot more debt from where we are today and fund a lot of this growth through the use of debt, in one way, shape, or form. You know, we could put out five, six, seven, eight different metrics, but I think it's just a lot to digest. We wanted to be true to who we are and kind of how we talk about things. Ultimately, we wanna display our growth capability through the use of EBITDA, which is something that we, you know, indirectly our EBITDA margin, which is something we have a little bit more control as the company. But also want to be true to our capital stack, and that's why we have kind of the EPS metric out there as well. That's kind of how we looked at it, and we wanted to keep it simple and straightforward in how we kind of look at it as a management team and as a company. That's really helpful. Thank you. One final one for me, sorry. Brad, you alluded in your remarks earlier to the software platform. Can you remind us of where you stand with that and when it'll be fully rolled out and operational? Sure. Irene, when I put that comment in there, I actually said to Jay, "And this will cause Irene to ask me where FaCTS is." I predicted that appropriately. I think we would've rolled out FaCTS faster had it not been during the pandemic, but we don't allow that to be an excuse around here. If I don't allow that, I can't really use it as one. I will just say that us rolling out FaCTS took longer because the project was probably bigger than we anticipated. It is going quite well. All of our funeral homes are up and running on FaCTS right now. I'm sorry, I just said it backwards. All of our cemeteries are up and running on FaCTS right now, and that's what's bluntly creating the financials that we just reported. It's working and working quite well. We plan on having all of our funeral homes online by the end of this year in the same manner. That will mean that at least the foundational aspect of this software is fully in place. Just to anticipate the next question, yes, it's going well enough that I've finally allowed an initial conversation on what do we do with this great product for the rest of the people in our industry that may or may not need it. We're not even close to understanding what that looks like yet. At least we've opened the door to allow those discussions to start. That is great. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question for today is coming from Scott Fromson. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question. Thank you, CIBC, and good morning, gentlemen. Hi, Scott. Just a question on labor inflation. Last conference call, you mentioned that you were seeing some labor inflation, but it was nothing compared to other industries. Can you update us on the labor situation in terms of wage inflation and worker shortages? Yeah. It's effectively the same. By that, it's always been a struggle to find really good funeral directors and really good managers in certain markets, and that hasn't changed. I'm really referring to our licensed personnel in that regard. When you have the two corporate offices we have, one sitting in Houston and one sitting in Toronto, you obviously have a competitive market there for people who want the same type of employees that are sitting in those buildings, accountants and IT professionals and administrative folks and things like that. We see some of that pressure here in Houston and in Toronto, for example. When you're really talking about the bulk of our employees, the answer doesn't change, and it's really not going to change because those folks wanna work for us. They probably worked at the same place for years and years and years, and they're not really interested in picking up and moving to the funeral home across the street or the competitor because they wanna stay in the industry and work with us. I don't see that changing. You'll see us having to deal with what I would call the base inflation like everyone else has to deal with, and we will, as we need to on a business-by-business basis, if we start seeing wage pressure through pricing. I just don't see it impacting us, or at least it hasn't yet, knock on wood. That would be my update to that question. What about merchandise? How do you deal with inflation on the merchandise pre contracts as revenue is realized? How is the merchandise and service trust fund set up to deal with this inflation? Well, I don't know that you would necessarily say it's set up to deal with this type of inflation, but I'll break the question down into two. Most of our merchandise that we're providing when it comes to the big dollar amounts are through our casket suppliers. We have a good relationship with them, and we manage the two of them. Where they've had price increases or struggles, we've gone back to them and explained to them how that would or would not work for us, and we've been very successful in that regard. We're not seeing pressure on some of our larger merchandise. We're seeing delivery problems, which is really not what you're asking, but I'll just say that, you know, we'll sell a monument and where it used to take three-six weeks to get that in and be able to deliver it and then recognize the revenue, we have a lot of sales on our books right now that, you know, we sold it, but we can't get it in, and if we can't get it in, we can't recognize it. Different problem, but that's going on. The merchandise, the trust funds are set up, obviously, you know, you know how that works. There's a gain in the trust. It spreads out across the contracts, and those contracts are recognized. We get that. That partially offsets the inflation. That partially offsets the inflation. If the inflation starts at 7% or 10% or 12% or it goes out of control, those trust funds aren't set up or designed to handle that. Dan wants to add something. He's waving at me on the television. Yeah. Scott, I'd just say, you know, those trust funds too are set up like any other fund, right? We deal with our advisors on a regular basis, looking at the allocations in our fund, where we're investing, who we're investing with. As circumstances change within the global market, you know, we have the ability to pivot and change our investments as well. That's one thing we do. It's just a very close relationship between our investment advisors and our management team. Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Just a final question. Can you put a percentage figure on average revenue per call increase, and if you can, broken down between funeral home and cemetery? The average revenue per call was 9% this quarter. That's on the funeral home side. When you hear us talk about that, it's always on the funeral home side. I'm not even sure that the other publicly traded companies attempt to do an average per call on the cemetery side. The reason why, going back to the previous answer, what's recognized or not recognized in a particular quarter may or may not have any relation to the call volume. It just gets to be kind of a wonky thing to look at. When you've heard us talk about the average per call over the last, I don't know, eight quarters, you're talking about funeral homes, and that was 9% this quarter. That sounds good. I'll turn it over. Thank you. Your next question is coming from Maggie MacDougall. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question. Thank you. Stifel. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Good morning, Maggie. First off, on the new five-year target, we talked a little bit about the role M&A versus organic growth will play. One question I did have was around the profitability assumptions that go into that goal. Can you tell us how you thought through the margin profile of the business with regards to setting out those targets, keeping in mind you know more recently the acquisitions you've been doing do seem to be at quite a favorable margin versus where some of them may have historically been? Yeah, Maggie. Part of the reason we actually didn't put a target out there for margin is because I think it starts to become just a little bit more of a math game. We are buying higher quality and better businesses. As we talk about, you know, near term organic growth being a little bit muted and growing, it gets a little bit more difficult. When we think about our margins, we're looking at, you know, the market share opportunities that we have, you know, pricing opportunities, development opportunities. You know, we do see organic growth happening over that five-year period, but again, more weighted towards the end and you know, that incremental growth flowing through to the bottom line at a little bit higher margin than kind of what we've seen actually in the past. That's how we're thinking about it. Yeah. Maggie, I'm gonna add something to that which will make Dan nervous. I don't know if you noticed when Scott asked me the financial question. He was dying to get involved because they don't mind me running funeral homes and cemeteries or making acquisitions. When I start talking about financial stuff too much, the team gets nervous. The reason why, in my opinion, we really wanted to move away from that focus on the margin is when that goal was put in place. It was really built around taking the legacy acquisitions that Park Lawn had, fully integrating them with what we were doing. We're layering on some acquisitions, and we said, "Okay, if we do this right, we should be about 26% by the end of 2022." Okay? We did that right, and we're at 26%, before the end of 2022. What Dan just said, I would say a little differently from my standpoint. What's gonna drive that margin now is, I mean, small incremental improvement on those current operations because you certainly can't expect it to do what it came from to where it is now. But it's really gonna be driven by the acquisitions we make, and I can't tell you what the mix of those acquisitions is going to be I can't tell you what state they're gonna be in at the time we buy them. Until we know what the businesses are, I can't tell you where we can improve them. We didn't wanna put a goal out there that we knew that we couldn't control. I mean, maybe we blow it out of the water, maybe we don't, but either way, we're still gonna buy the good businesses. It just didn't make sense to us. That's my non-financial answer to that question. Thank you. Makes sense. Next question I had was around your M&A pipeline and price expectations in the market. Coming off of two years of a pandemic, it has been a robust set of operating conditions for your particular industry, although unclear to me that that's actually been the case all the way from small operator to large. However, that being said, would appreciate your comments around how you deal with valuation or price expectations given that, you know, it has been quite a strong market the last couple of years. Yeah. Good question. The pandemic definitely changed things up. There's no doubt. Before any of this happened, depending on the business, we would pull five to 10 years of data from them in our valuation and due diligence process, but certainly on the valuation side. In that five to 10 years of data, you would always, as a general rule, see a really good year and a really bad year, but it's kind of interesting how it kind of all goes to the average or mean, right? Obviously, everyone sees an impact of what happened to their business in 2020 and 2021. Most people don't try with a straight face to say that they believe that that is sustainable going forward unless they're one of their brokers in the industry, and I know them well enough to say, "Really?" Then it kinda goes back to, okay, let's talk about what this business average is really gonna look like. The pandemic has had an impact. We have to kind of sort through whether or not their growth that everyone is seeing is sustainable. If not, we have to make a decision as to how much we pull that back. Everyone that we've talked to that joined our company in 2021 and the ones that we're talking to in 2022 understand that. As a result of that, I have not seen any pressure on price. People are not bringing in 2021 numbers and asking us to apply a multiple to that without paying attention to the surrounding circumstances. I think that's the question you were asking me. If not- Yeah. No, that's a great information to have. It sounds like you take a long-term view on the cash flow profile when you're looking at pricing deals. Makes a lot of sense. One final one for me. You guys are in the fortunate situation of having sort of a domestic North American business with very little geopolitical risk, very little exposure to inflation relative to a lot of other consumer products businesses. However, we are seeing gasoline prices creep up quite high. Commodities are surging, and it does, you know, bear asking how we should think about your ability to pass through even small changes in operating costs that could occur as this sort of inflation picture continues to unfold. That's an excellent question. The answer that I would give you in March of 2022 could be different in June of 2022. As we sit here right now, any changes that we've experienced, we can handle through pricing power at a location basis as necessary. I will tell you why. It's just not a throwaway statement. We are, as a general rule, not the highest price in our market. That cannot be said of some of the other publicly traded companies that you follow or listen or talk to. We have, and in some of our markets, we may be number three on a pricing perspective. We're probably, as a general rule, number two in most places, and that gives us the ability to do that, a little bit. Now, I have obviously read what some of the other companies said, and they're looking at staffing and maintenance, and then I hear energy-related expenses. Now, you have to say, look, we have a lot of cars, there's no doubt, and a lot of equipment in cemeteries. But, you know, we're still a tenth of the size of the largest business that's in this industry. So gas going up does get our attention, but probably not at that same scale. Okay. Thanks so much. I'll pass the line over. Thanks, Maggie. Your next question for today is coming from Zachary Evershed. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question. Good morning, everyone. Calling in from National Bank. Thanks for taking my question. Morning, Zach. The $75 million-$125 million US per year that you make reference to for your 2026 goals in acquisition opportunities, is that the amount that you intend to spend annually or the incremental revenue added? That's the amount we intend to spend. Perfect. Thanks. For my second question, I'll join the gang and ask another one about inflation. We're seeing a big uptick in building materials and labor in that industry. Have the expected returns on your organic projects been affected? Not yet. What we are really seeing is it takes longer. Now I will accept the Westminster project in Toronto. That has been kind of an eye-opening experience for those of us who are not used to the cost of construction north of the border. As a general rule, where we are, if we see that a project is going to take too long or cost too much, we'll just go to another one on the list and wait for that to make more sense. Right now we decided to start building the funeral home in Waco, Texas. There's a reason for that. We have access to material, labor, things like that. We can move it along. That's why we decided to do that. We looked past another on-site that we were considering because their markets didn't allow us to do that. We thought there'd be too much pressure on bringing in what we needed. Right now, we're not seeing that impact, but it's a good question, and that could change. I mean, if this continues, all of these answers are going to change. Right now, it just hasn't impacted us that much. That's clear. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over. Your next question for today is coming from Darryl Young. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question. TD Securities. Good morning, guys. Hi, Daryl. First question is just following up on the capital stack and the ability to achieve the 2026 target, you know, if everything were to go just so, without raising equity. What kind of a leverage position would that assume? Because I think pre this announcement and pre your equity raise a couple months ago that you were talking about potentially taking leverage higher. So maybe just a bit of an update there. Hey, Daryl. It's Dan. You know, I’m gonna avoid giving you a direct answer, and I’m going to kinda keep my answer as it's been in the past, which is less specific. The reason being for that is because you know, a lot of this is unknown. I’m very adamant about you know, how we use our different sources of capital is very situational, and it depends on where everything sits at the time of need. You know, we sit here at 1x leverage. We have a credit facility that allows us, at this point, up to 3.75x. You know, our peers are operating in the 3.5x-4.5x. We are much more comfortable getting closer to the lower end of our peers than we probably have been in the past and as the management of this company has probably been in the past. That's my very roundabout way of answering your question. Okay, perfect. That's helpful. Then just one last high-level question. We've heard from some of the US lifers about the potential for elevated death rates above the 2019 baseline, even with the pullback in COVID. Is that something you're factoring into your outlook and consideration, or would that represent upside if we did have an elevated death rate above 2019, if that proved to be true? Again, that's a good question because we're seeing that, right? The Omicron and other variants didn't have nearly the impact of what happened a year ago on the death rate, at least in the communities that we serve. But we definitely see an elevated death rate, and we definitely read the same things you do that are coming out from the life insurance companies as well as different governmental agencies. We're seeing that. You know, some people argue it's the pandemic. Folks didn't make it to the doctor, folks are depressed being locked in their homes. You know, the things that are affecting people now are not the way you would like to see people pass away. I mean, it wasn't a good situation. Whether or not that holds or not, it remains to be seen. That is not something that we considered that there would be an elevated death rate over the next five years. We didn't bake that into our model. We kind of assumed a normalizing of kind of somewhere between where we are and 2019, kind of going back to what was normal. The answer to your question is we see that out there. If it stays, that means that we've got some combination of the baby boomers hitting and then some combination of a higher death rate that's starting to occur in the US for some socioeconomic reasons that are far outside of my pay grade. Okay. That's great color. Thanks very much. That's it for me. Thank you. Once again, if there are any questions or comments, please press star one. You have a follow-up question coming from Scott Fromson. Scott, your line is live. Thanks. Just wanna beat the acquisition horse again. You, you're saying you think you can do 75-125 per annual deals. That seems to be a little bit down, and I know you're a conservative guy. You've mentioned in the past that the major constraints are time and internal resources, not so much capital or number of opportunities. Has that changed? Has the pipeline changed, or are you just being conservative? I don't think either one of them. First off, I made it through your first question, so I'm not comfortable with you coming back and taking another shot at me, Scott, but I'll answer anyway. No, I was taking the shot at the horse. I noticed that you started that way, but down here in Texas, we take shooting horses very seriously. I just want you to know that. Or beating them. Here's the way I would look at that. I don't think it's conservative, and I don't think it's down, right? If you look at Park Lawn bought the Signature Group, which is basically this management team in 2018. That was a large purchase. I think it's the largest one that Park Lawn has ever done. That skews 2018. 2019, we added Horan & McConaty and Baue which together would fall right in the middle of this target, right? It skews 2019. 2020 was the pandemic when we were all trying to figure out what was going on, and 2021 is kind of the first time that I would say, "Okay, that was more normal and more of what I would anticipate on a go-forward basis." Well, if that's the case, and I don't have it right in front of me again, but I think we spent, like, $125 million last year on those acquisitions. I really do think we're not being conservative. I think that it's really more indicative of what a normal year looks like. Now, I'm gonna add some color on that. There are two other publicly traded companies that are in the acquisition game, at least here in the US. You have SCI, and you have Carriage, I think Carriage has said they're going to spend $.100 million on acquisitions over the next three years. Not in one year, but over three. SCI is 10 times our size, you know, spent $100 million plus last year, basically the same or less than we did, and that was in large part due to a large acquisition in the fourth quarter, and we saw that one too. I guess my point is, I think that the acquisition target that we put out there makes us a, you know, I call us a defensive growth stock. We're in a, you know, the other companies are buying back their stock and deploying capital that way, and we're growing, and we're growing the right way, and we're growing by businesses I think they would love to get their hands on, but they can't. We're growing at that rate that's equivalent to an SCI and vastly outgrowing the other publicly traded company. I'll just sum it up because I probably said it three times now. I don't think it's conservative. I think it's exactly what our investors would expect us to do in a good year, which is mimicking 2021. Okay. Thanks, Brad. That's helpful. Thanks for clarifying. All right. Thank you. Your next question is coming from Kyle McPhee. Please announce your affiliation, then pose your question, Hi. Cormark Securities. Guys, you've made it clear you're gonna continue investing in your funeral and cemetery assets to support organic growth. Can you quantify that in terms of the non-maintenance CapEx we should expect to see? You know, maybe your budgets are just relative to what we've seen in trailing years. Yeah. Hey, Kyle, it's Dan again. You know, we think that spend is going to be relatively consistent, and as we acquire different businesses, you know, we'll find additional projects and hopefully on-site and things of that nature. I think historically, you know, our development spend is somewhere between 3%-4% of our revenue, excuse me. You know, I think you can kind of see that continue going forward. Okay. Thank you for the color. There appear to be no further questions in queue. I would like to turn the floor back over to Brad Green for any closing comments. I would like to thank everyone for joining the call today, and certainly, in the times that we live in, everyone remain safe and look forward to talking to you all next quarter. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.