Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Power Corporation third quarter 2021 conference call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Jeffrey Orr, President and Chief Executive Officer of Power Corporation of Canada. Thank you. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, operator, and welcome everyone to our quarterly results call on this Remembrance Day. I am here with Greg Tretiak. We're gonna, in the usual fashion, walk through and give you comments on what's going on at the company and then open it up for questions. I would draw your attention on pages two and three to the cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information and non-IFRS measures. Why don't I jump us all the way forward to page six and just draw your attention to the various materials that have been released by Power Corp and by our principal operating subsidiaries with respect to their own earnings and different conference materials that they have participated in over the last quarter. There's lots of other information for you to look at to supplement what we're gonna talk about here today. With that, I will jump to page seven on the presentation and just give you our perspectives on the quarter. I think first and foremost, this was a quarter where the earnings momentum and growth at our public operating companies, namely Great-West Life and IGM, were really in evidence. You know, we have been, I think, saying for some time in our different communications with investors over the past several years that we believe that we had been building through our operating businesses bases on which we could deliver a lot stronger earnings growth than we had over the previous years. That's been building for some time over the past year or so, but it really came into evidence in the third quarter with strong solid earnings at both Great-West Lifeco and IGM. So really pleased to see that, and I think that is actually the highlight of the quarter in my mind. Having said that, you know, we have continued as well to look to divest of assets at the Power Corp level, which is part of our communicated strategy. In the last quarter, we had two events that provided some liquidity. We had an opportunity in our Sagard Europe III, which is our private equity business in Europe, and we had an opportunity to sell through a secondary transaction, Power's limited partnership position in that fund, which was also good for developing the investor base of Sagard as there was interest in our position. We liquidated it for CAD 334 million and also reported a gain, I think, of about CAD 66 million pre-tax on that particular transaction. Then one of our four standalone businesses, GP Strategies, we entered into a transaction and that closed, and so we've exited that position for pre-tax proceeds of CAD 94 million. A couple of events there to create liquidity at Power. With that, we are also pleased to be announcing here that we're resuming our purchases under the normal course share buyback program. You would be aware that with the start of COVID-19, we took a conservative view in terms of cash, and we suspended purchases under that program other than some small purchases to mitigate option dilution. Aside from that, effectively, we pulled out of the market, so we'll be reinstituting our purchases under that program. We're pleased to announce that today. Just while we're on the topic of buybacks, GBL as well, in their own interaction with shareholders, they have their own buyback program. They've been taking various measures to enhance their shareholder returns, and they've announced an additional share buyback program. You may be aware GBL has a net asset value discount, an NAV discount itself, and it's been working on that and is looking to reduce their own discount. As well, it's been a terrific year for fundraising at our alternative asset investment platforms, and that continued in the third quarter. So far this year, we've got CAD 3.4 billion raised from non-Power participants, and we'll talk some more about that when we get into the presentation. Then, Great-West and Sagard announced a transaction which will put Sagard into the real estate business, a whole new strategy for them and enhance their AUM materially, which we'll talk about as we come to that particular part of the presentation. Obviously, in terms of a highlight, I don't think there's any company or any business or any investor today who doesn't have ESG at the top of their minds. There's nothing kind of more topical going on in finance or in the world right now. We're not blind to that. We think we're very well set up for all of the efforts in ESG across our group companies, but certainly just a ton of work for corporations, a ton of work for really society and a ton of work for Power and Great-West and all of our companies to continue to meet the expectations and the challenges that we all collectively face. In this regard, Great-West Life did publicly announce this week its commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Across the group, as I'm sure many of you are with financial institutions across the group, there's just a whole plethora of products that are also being launched in this regard. With that, I'm gonna turn the microphone over to Greg Tretiak, who's gonna walk through our financials in the next few slides. Great. Thank you, Jeff. I'm on page eight, and our NAV at CAD 52.81 at the end of the quarter was up 2% from June, and at November was up an additional 2%. Also, when we look at it from a year ago, up 51% from a year ago. Net earnings of CAD 1.09 compared to CAD 0.75, up 45%. Adjusted net earnings CAD 1.10 compared to CAD 0.72 in Q3, up 53%. We announced a quarterly dividend of CAD 44.75. Go to page nine, and just a couple of quick points here. You're all familiar with the NAV table. Just saying, Sagard, our interest in Wealthsimple is there, and that hasn't changed from the previous quarter. We kept the same mark from their last round of financing, and that's at CAD 768 million. It's the CAD 1.4 that reflects the sale of Sagard III that Jeff just mentioned in his opening remarks. That's CAD 304 million that basically moves down the hierarchy of the NAV table to the cash at CAD 1.6 billion. To remind you, ChinaAMC is shown at its equity-accounted book value here. Also, in the standalone businesses, that's where Lion is. There is it's marked at CAD 1 billion, which reflects its CAD 12.62 share price at the end of the quarter. With that, I take you to the earnings on page 10 and quickly go through those. Certainly I've given the headlines already. Jeff's mentioned that the significant contributions from Great-West Lifeco and IGM. Great-West Lifeco at CAD 0.86, up 28% from the prior year. You can see that the momentum at Great-West Lifeco is continuing with another strong quarter. We have a couple slides in the deck, so I won't go into any detail here. IGM up 25% at CAD 0.25 or CAD 0.25 contribution in the quarter. That's record earnings driven by record AUM and operating leverage. At GBL, in the quarter, Q3 is not a dividend-paying quarter in Europe. So you can see that they had a -CAD 0.02 contribution in the quarter, the same as last year. Both quarters had a mark-down, a negative mark with respect to a good event, which is the appreciation of Webhelp, which is an asset that they hold a 60% interest in, has had significant appreciation throughout the last couple of years. The mark comes from the liability associated with the non-controlling interest and management puts that have to be marked. The wonders of consolidation accounting, we don't get to mark up the increase in value on the holding, but we have to recognize the minority interest and management plus liability. Too much detail, quite frankly, for the non-accountants, but that's the nature of that particular item. Down the page to alternative asset investment platforms, that reflects the Sagard Europe III disposition, CAD 66 million in there, contributing to the CAD 0.06 in the quarter. China Asset Management, strong results once again in China. Later on you'll see a chart and you'll see our contribution is up 62%. Strong increase in AUM and performance of its mutual funds. The other comment I'd make is Lion is reflected in the standalone businesses. Finally, on our corporate operations, another little tax noise in both the quarters. In Q3, we had a CAD 0.03 benefit in the quarter. In Q3 2021, we have a CAD 0.01 negative effect from tax in the quarter. With that, Jeff, I turn it back to you. Okay. Thank you, Greg. The next few pages, I'll just spend very, very quickly on our strategy. On page 11, I'm not gonna read the page. Many of you have seen this a lot. Perhaps someone on the call have not and are new to the call, but this is what we've articulated as our strategy going back with the announcement of the reorganization, and as you go through the various points there, I hope you will agree we have been executing on each of the points. These aren't just words on a page. We take it very seriously, and we have been working on all of them, including at the bottom of the page, our communication strategies, not just at Power, but across our various public companies as well. I'll then turn you forward to page 12. We are also pulling on all of these three levers, being the organic growth tools that our public companies have, the M&A levers that our public companies have, and then the additional value that can be created at the Power Corp level through various tools that we have. Those three levers translate into value creation for shareholders on the right-hand side through higher earnings growth for those parts of our businesses that trade on earnings, which is namely Great-West Life and IGM. There's potential revisions as we prove to the market that we have higher growth, that we have multiple revisions, as we execute. That and what we do in those parts of our businesses that are NAV driven increases our NAV, and then we still think there's lots of potential on the discount side at the Power Corp level. That's how our strategies translate into value for shareholders. On page 13, each of the public OpCos have their own strategies as to how they are pursuing organic and inorganic. The point of this page too as well, they're all on their own missions to communicate. Let me turn to page 14. I think this is really a quarter where we saw the growth at Great-West Lifeco broadly based across its various platforms. A little bit of noise in the reinsurance or in the capital and risk solutions part of the business, but strong growth across all the operating platforms, and then led by Empower, of course, with its strong organic growth in the market and then the three acquisitions that they have done, two of which have closed. Then there's the Pru acquisition, which has been, of course, signed and is not closed at this point. Really strong earnings growth. Of course, Great-West Life did communicate in June at their investor day that they had medium-term growth objectives for their base EPS of 8%-10% prior to additional acquisitions, and that announcement was prior to the Prudential announcement, of course, which came in July. IGM is really firing on all cylinders, I think is the way to describe it. It has got strong flows. It's got strong growth in AUM. It has got its businesses, all of them are showing really strong top-line growth. IG Wealth is, Mackenzie is, right across the board, and we're seeing the operating leverage in that business work. You know, obviously, markets are helping, but we've got markets, we've got strong flows, and the operating leverage in the business is really becoming evident, and we've got good, strong earnings momentum at IGM. That's really great to see, and I would say that's the slide of the quarter, if you will, for at least in my mind. Moving on to page 15. So far this year, we have sold assets for about CAD 800 million pre-tax, and those come from the transactions you can see on the page there. I think all of them have been talked about before. That's part of the strategy. I think when we launched the strategy, we talked a lot about the standalone businesses being a source of cash. You know, we also said that we were moving to lighten our capital commitment underpinning the investment platforms and a number of what you see here, both on the first point and then in Power Sustainable. While we're getting in third-party investors, we're also looking for opportunities when they're there to take some cash off the table and with the view to returning that to shareholders. Which then leads to page 16, and I think I already mentioned this at the outset. I think I've made the point, so I don't know that I'll repeat on the buyback point. I will point out we do have an objective. The last point under PCC share buybacks, we do have an objective to maintain cash and cash equivalents of about 2x our fixed charges. Then beyond that's available resources to return to shareholders. I do wanna say every time I mention buybacks, and I've said this many times, that you know, if ever one of our group companies needed capital because they had an opportunity for whatever it was, you know, obviously we're gonna prioritize supporting the growth of our underlying core businesses. In the absence of that, then we would be looking to return the money to shareholders. We've also worked on reducing our financing costs, and you would've been aware we issued CAD 200 million of prefs last month and also redeemed a virtually identical series in terms of its term, in terms of its terms, excuse me, and took CAD 3 million of after-tax annual financing costs out through that transaction. At the bottom of the page, just to, you know, we are very mindful that the group's leverage ratios are temporarily elevated because of the Great-West Lifeco's very active acquisitions. You know, as I think you're aware, Great-West Lifeco spent about CAD 10 billion over just a little over 12 months or has announced. They're not all closed, as I mentioned, on Pru. Their leverage ratios right now are right up at really where the tops as they can be. There's a lot of cash flow coming from the businesses they've acquired. We think that will get itself back into more normal levels in the near term. We're conscious of that and working on that part of the business going forward here. Okay. I'm gonna flip then on page 17 to just a couple comments on the platforms. Continued strong third party fundraising, which is a key theme. CAD 3.4 billion from non-Power parties other than Power to date. That includes the 334 of the secondary, and the balance is capital that is going into the strategies themselves. I won't read off all of them on the page, but you see them there, the various key fundraisings that have been announced year to date. On the right-hand side of the page, you see the continual drop in Power's capital as a percentage of the total AUM. The top of the page is funded and unfunded AUM, and at the bottom of the page, the unfunded, which is really the new fundraisings going on. You can see that, of course, there's an even greater percentage of third party non-Power in the fundraising as we move forward on a lighter capital model for Power Corp page 18 just breaks it out. You've seen this slide. This breaks out the funded and unfunded of CAD 12.5 billion. It looks at the funded AUM on the right-hand side or center right-hand side of the slide and breaks it out between Sagard and Power Sustainable. The dark blue is Power Corp's own money. The light, I don't know what that color is. It's, I guess it's blue. I'm looking around at Greg. He doesn't know what color it is either. To the light color there is non-Power capital. That's just a breakout. You see in the sub-bullet at the top of the page, about CAD 900 million increase in funded and unfunded AUM in just compared to the end of the second quarter. It's good progress. Okay, page 19. Sagard has launched itself now into the real estate, real property business through the acquisition of EverWest from Great-West. This is a transaction that's a win-win for both Great-West and for Sagard. For Sagard, it launches an entirely new strategy and will add $3.8 billion to its assets under management. As you look lower on the page, Great-West Lifeco has made a commitment over the ensuing years to put another $2 billion into the strategies, as well as another $500 million into different Sagard products. Great-West Lifeco was building out its U.S. real estate business. It was doing so for its own balance sheet needs and was also looking to manage third-party money. Sagard has really built up a very large network of LPs or investors across its different strategies. I think it's well over 100 investors and LPs in its different strategies, and it's become quite a fundraising machine. That was something that Sagard was bringing to EverWest. Sagard has also proved very adept at hiring talent. All of that, with all that Lifeco had on its plate, and recognizing it had a desire for the assets, Great-West thought better way to go was to have Sagard in effect manage EverWest. Then you'll see here that Great-West took a minority equity stake in Sagard. Very similar to the structure they did at Northleaf. They are very interested in getting, if you will, a lot of product flow and also being aware of how those strategies are unfolding and getting a window and a seat into that. We think this is gonna be good for Sagard and Power, and we think it's gonna be good for Great-West. We're really pleased to announce that. Okay, page 20. won't go on on this page just to say each of our companies when we're looking at alternative strategies and I guess private equity, private credit, real estate, etc., this is good for Power, but each of our public companies is also focused on increasing their participation either for their own balance sheet in the case of Great-West or for their clients in the case of Great-West and IGM. GBL is also building out its private asset capabilities through Sienna. This is a focus across the group. Turning to page 21. You have got continued acceleration in the profit here of ChinaAMC, China Asset Management. Of course, we own just under 28% between ourselves and IGM. We're really privileged to have a position of such size and such a quality company. We continue to believe that this is gonna provide great growth in shareholder value for our group over time. You know, China is going to, and is prioritizing the development of their savings and retirement business. It's one of the reasons why, notwithstanding at times, you know, strained relations over the last few years, financial services companies, just across all the major financial institutions across the world, many of them are trying to establish positions in China. The reason is simple, China is favoring the development of a savings business and a retirement business. They need to do so if they're gonna move to a consumer-led economy. You need to have your population secure in their retirement, and you need to have that broadly based. To do that, you have to have a good savings business. This is a priority in China, and China AMC is in a beautiful position to take advantage of that, so we're really thrilled to have this asset. Okay. Standalone businesses on page 22. We have taken action since the announcement of our new strategy to surface and then realize value across the portfolio here. The most obvious one was on Lion Electric and through the SPAC that we did roughly a year ago and going public. Lion continues to progress their business. We're really thrilled. We have really surfaced a lot of value there. I mentioned previously that Lumenpulse continues to progress on their business. We did make an attempt to bring the company public, ran into choppy waters there in the spring, so we decided not to push it at that time. We continue to be very pleased with the progress at Lumenpulse. Peak, in the fourth quarter of last year, actually did bring in, or part of their business, being Easton Diamond Sports, was in effect sold to Rawlings, all part of Peak continuing to develop their business strategy to surface value. As I mentioned earlier, we've actually sold GP Strategies here, so that's been liquefied. We're very active on these various businesses, and we've got great businesses here. We continue to do what is smart for Power, which is to maximize our value, ultimately realize the value, and work with our partners, managers and outside shareholders, to do so. Page 23, we continue to work on our operating expenses, and we've made continued progress here. It was quick at the beginning, and we're chipping away as we get to a 100% goal. On the right-hand side, it looks like we've already achieved our goal, but the Q3 at the CAD 38 million there, that's a little bit overstated. We've got lower travel expenses because of COVID. So when we look at achieving the goal, we're trying to normalize for being in a post-COVID world. We don't think we're quite at goal yet, but we're getting very, very close. Page 24. I think I mentioned everything on this page, so I'll just skip over it. I've already made the point. We're all trying to communicate very aggressively. Page 25, I think I've addressed as well. I just point out that Power Corp does have, and has had for a number of years, a separate website on the various activities in the whole area of ESG, and you can refer there to it. I think we'll all be talking more about this as we go forward. Page 26, continued progress on our discount. To my mind, you know, the voyage really started at the beginning of 2019 when Great-West Life sold its U.S. Life business, and then we did the three-way buyback, the three-level buyback between Great-West, Power Financial and Power Corp, and we were really communicating we were gonna be working on reducing the discount. That culminated in the announcement of the reorganization in the fall of 2019. With the exception of the blip when we went into COVID, we've been steadily working through the various levers that we've been pulling on to reduce the discount, and we still think there's opportunity to do that going forward. There you see it. I will, you know, wrap up on the opportunities for further value creation. I think if you go to the top of the page, those organic levers, and just talk about, you know, roughly three-quarters of our value is in Great-West Life and our control positions in Great-West Life and IGM. They are principally earnings driven. They trade on earnings as opposed to NAV. A little bit of an exception in Great-West and IGM, excuse me, on their strategic investments, and they've been pointing out that they've got some assets there that don't get fully valued based on earnings, but they're still principally earnings driven. We continue to prioritize driving earnings growth. You'll hear that from me, you'll hear it from Paul Mahon, you'll hear it from James O'Sullivan. Management is highly focused on taking advantage of past investments to drive top line growth and then drive bottom line growth. Earnings growth is gonna be a big driver of how we create value at Power. In the meantime, we've got M&A as an additional tool. Yes, Great-West Life is in a position where it doesn't have a lot of excess capital sitting around, but that doesn't mean it's not very active in looking for opportunities. At some point here, we'll get those leverage ratios back where they need to be, and we'll be in a position to continue to pursue transactions. Then IGM is also very active in looking at opportunities. M&A will continue to be a driver of value. At Power Corp, you know, I really think we're just getting going here. We continue to have a lot of opportunities to create value for shareholders. First of all, in terms of the simplification of the group through realizing value on non-financial services businesses, on simplification of where our assets are, on simplification of what's left at Power, communicating clearly how we're creating value through our asset management businesses and how we're creating value through the capital that we have underpinning those businesses, increased communication with the stakeholders, and then continuing to, as we do all of that, drive the NAV discount down. You know, when I think about the discount, you know, I do understand how for a number of years prior to, particularly 2013 to 2018, it kind of, languished around 30%-35% when you take into account both the Power and the Power Financial discount. When I talk about it, that's really the double discount. You know, in the past, we've been as low as 5%, and when I look at it going forward, I get if people don't understand the value of the assets at Power, they're not gonna put a lot of value on it. When, as we surface it, realize it, simplify it, then I think that story changes. When I look at the discount, other than the expenses, so if you look at our operating expenses, CAD 150 million-CAD 160 million a year pre-tax. You know, if you do a present value on that, what do you get to maybe 2.5%-3% of our asset value. You should have a discount for that, I acknowledge that. You know, sometimes people raise taxes if we were able to sell assets 'cause we would. I guess that's a hypothetical question, 'cause I don't think we would do things that would put ourselves in a position to realize a lot of taxes on a disposition. Those are the kind of legitimate issues you could talk about a discount. They don't get you anywhere near 20%. They don't get you anywhere near there. Power Corp's got, in effect, better liquidity than our underlying operating businesses for those that wanna buy and sell and get in and out. I think we've got a pretty compelling story as we continue to execute over the next few years here to drive that discount to a lower place. With that, we remain very excited about what's going on here and the opportunities ahead. As I see, we're coming up on the half hour. I should stop talking and open it up for questions that you may have. Operator, that's it. I would ask you to open up the call to questions. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star, then the number one to ask a question. Your first question comes from Graham Ryding with TD Securities. Hi, good morning. Hi, Graham. Maybe we could start with the transaction that you did with EverWest. I guess what I'm interested to know is just what's your ownership stake in, you know, Sagard asset management or the overall asset management platform going forward, 'cause I know you also recently sold, or not sold, but the, you know, the management of Sagard took on a 4.5% stake, I think, in that business. How should we think about your overall ownership of this alternative asset management platform going forward? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't think we've disclosed the number yet, so we should come back on that, but do that when we can do it to all shareholders at the same time. I think we should do that, and it's a fair question. I think we own a very large percentage. It was a small minority position that Great-West Lifeco has taken, and it was a small minority position that management has taken. So that's kind of a half answer to your question. I've gone as far as I can without. I think it's a fair question, and we should come back with a clearer number, but do it for everybody. The second thing I would say, though, is going forward. You know, if we do see opportunities to bring in outsiders, even into the GP, if they can add significant value to Power's share of the GP, we'll be open to do that. In the case of EverWest, this gets Sagard into a brand-new strategy. It's a very big asset class. There's a lot of AUM that comes with it, and they've got Great-West Life looking to put more capital to work. That's gonna build out the business for Sagard. Great-West Life rightly said, "Well, if we're gonna, we wanna do that with you. We believe we like EverWest. We bought it. We think we can grow EverWest even more quickly under your hands. If we're gonna do that and make the capital commitment, we want a piece of the, of the action at the GP. That was a fair thing for Great-West Lifeco to do. All of these deals, as you know, if there's a transaction between Great-West Lifeco and Power, then the Great-West Lifeco independent committee with a related party committee, which has got all independent directors on it, gets involved in that. That's the background to it. I've gone on a bit long here. We own the overwhelming majority. Right now, there's small minority positions. We will work on getting disclosure so that we can be more specific about that. Going forward, evidence that, you know, we're not averse to bringing in other partners into it if they're gonna add a lot of value to our own stake. Greg, anything? Did you wanna add anything on that? No? Nope. I think you captured it all. Okay. That, Graham, as far as I can go right now. Okay, that's fine. Was there any, like, cash proceeds involved with this transaction or was this purely a like an equity interest swap for the AUM? Yeah. I'm looking at Greg. If there was cash, it was pretty small. No. Yeah, there was no cash. No. Okay. Yeah. You know, I thought it was notable that you did a secondary sale for your Sagard Europe III investment. Is that something we should expect more of? Are there other parts of your asset management, you know, within the funds that you see potential to reduce your direct investment, maybe Sustainable Capital? Is there an opportunity there? Yeah, yes, with Power Sustainable Capital. In fact, that did occur in the funding that was announced a year ago when we did the CAD 1 billion fund, of which CAD 600 million was non-Power. Power rolled assets in and took a little bit of cash off the table. That's in that slide. I can't remember the page now, earlier in the deck. There were four cash items when I talked about the CAD 800 million that was raised. You'll see, I think it was 150 or so that occurred when that was rolled in. There could be more opportunities 'cause Power still has, Power Sustainable still has a number of assets that are still wholly owned by Power that are in the development phase. The wind and solar assets that are being developed. As they get developed, their plans are to roll them into that fund and other funds that we would have, bring in third parties, and take some money off the table. That's an answer, yes, on Power Sustainable Capital. On the Sagard side, we don't have immediate plans for that, and this was quite opportunistic. I'll maybe digress a bit, but just talk about what's going on. You know, lots of investors who are looking to get exposure to private asset classes are looking for secondary positions as well. The reason they like secondary positions is if you put your money, say, in a brand-new private equity fund, as you may know, it takes three, four years for that money to get deployed, and the returns come four or five years later. If you walk into a secondary position that's existed for three or four years, you walk into an investment which is closer to the harvest period, and therefore, the returns come in a more immediate period, so you don't go through the J-curve of waiting in the desert for three or four years. There's a lot of interest in secondaries. That's part of what has driven the secondary market. In this case, investors who were looking at some of the fundraising that Sagard was doing elsewhere, you know, were looking for secondaries and raised the possibility that they wanted to purchase our interest. The team was really opportunistic in saying, "Well, that's great because Power is on a strategy to lower its capital." It kind of came together, and we were able to take some money off the table and expand the investor base for Sagard. Again, it was a win-win. Will there be more of those? I don't wanna promise those. I'm not aware of any that are being worked on at this time, but we would certainly be open to them if those opportunities came. Okay. That sort of leads to your cash balance and the dips that you have quarter-over-quarter. You did mention that you're gonna be active on your NCIB, but what about originally you had talked about a CAD 350 million pref share that you were looking to redeem. Is that still on the cards? Do you wanna address that? The question is on the CAD 350 million preferred shares. I could. I'm gonna pass this to Greg. Sorry, Graham, I could barely hear you on that. Yeah, we're gonna continue to look at the market in terms of opportunities. As you know, there's some interesting hybrids out there that may suit the bill, and we've been looking at them. There's opportunity obviously to reduce the cost of financing through some of these instruments other than the perpetual prefs issue that we did just last month. I might add a note to that, Graham. I think when we originally announced the strategy, we had notionally discussed it in the context of taking CAD 350 million of cash, and we had a goal of reducing our financing expenses by CAD 15 million, if you recall. You know, we're thinking about can we get there, and not use CAD 350 million of cash by lowering the expenses, the cost of our financing and not utilize the cash but still get to 15 goal some other way. We're not declaring victory on that, but that's what we're thinking about. We're looking for those kind of opportunities to continue to reduce the cost but maybe do it with either no cash or less cash as we do so. That's kind of behind Greg's comment. Okay. Understood. My last question, if I could, just your comment on the discount to NAV, and how you think it's appropriate to have some discount in there for, you know, your ongoing expenses. What about the potential for some tax leakage if you ever wanted to dispose of assets? You know, is there a reasonable discount that you think would account for that in your when looking at your sort of the whole cost structure and discount to NAV? I don't see one. No, I don't see much of one because I think it's a pretty hypothetical question. I think that if we were ever to do divestitures, we would be looking for ways to, you know, get our cost base properly aligned and not face big tax bills unnecessarily. It's hypothetical that we would be doing big divestitures, and we would be trying to be minimizing that. I can get really precise on a number when it comes to, in my own head at least, when it comes to discounting the operating expenses. It's a little more of a brain teaser to try and figure out a tax question like that that's very hypothetical. I don't think it gets you to 20%. I just, you know, you could create cases, but I don't know that it gets you anywhere near there. That's not a very precise answer to your question because the question is pretty hypothetical. Yeah. Anything, Greg? You're looking at me. Am I jumping? I'd just add, Graham, that you know, I would point to perhaps history in that you know, whenever we do things of that nature, and as Jeff said, that is a real hypothetical. You know, we've managed our tax and our tax attributes to, I think, pretty successfully over the years. You know, we would be minimizing the tax bite on any transaction of that nature, with advanced planning and due care. Okay. That's okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Graham. Your next question comes from the line of Doug Young with Desjardins. Good morning. Just on the Sagard, back to the Sagard business. I guess the first question is, any way to quantify the net inflows? I think you've given obviously some fundraising and maybe the fundraising number is what the net flows would technically be. Just, you know, curious to get more color on that. Can you also remind us what you hold Sagard at in the NAV? Not what your investments are in Sagard, but what the actual asset management entity has held at within the NAV. The reason I ask is obviously there's been lots of transactions in the alt space over the last little while. Just trying to get some color on that. On your first question, I'll give you a high level answer, and I don't know whether we've got a flow number, but of course, all of these funds are closed-end funds. If you think about them in the context of sort of public funds, they're not open-ended funds. Once people have committed, they get their capital returned either through income, let's say, on the private credit funds, but also return of capital. Or they get it through a return of capital when an asset's been disposed of. But they don't actually have an opportunity to come and say, "I want my money back," right? There's no outflows. There's return of income and capital. All of the gross fundraisings are net inflows. That's the way to think about it. What we haven't tried to do is, at least I haven't seen it, is to look at the fundraisings and then to look at what return of capital has been also provided to the LPs. Then you've got to add in the AUM growth through growth and value. I don't have that in my head. I'm looking at Greg. I don't think we've got that. Maybe we have that. I haven't seen it. Given my answer, does that satisfy your question? Gross inflows are equal to net inflows because these are closed-end funds. Yeah, I think others kind of bake in a little bit of the return. I know it's a complicated kind of beast, but I think some do kind of factor in some of the return of capital when they think of the ins and outs. That's where I was kind of going. If you don't have it, that's fine. I'd be. Yeah. That's a good question, though, Doug. Go ahead, Greg. You know, Doug, I think that that's certainly something that we'll look forward to disclosing in the coming quarters. We certainly have those numbers available to us, but we haven't disclosed them yet. I think that your question has prompted a job for the team here who's looking for something to do for the next quarter. Always looking for feedback on our communication and IR, so that's good and we will work on that. Yeah. I think the other thing that you asked was what are we essentially carrying the management companies at? I would say to you is that right now that they are basically valued on their book cost. You know, in the case of Sagard, it's essentially the cash that they have on the balance sheet. I think it's something like CAD 80 million or something right now. You know, we haven't factored a value for the management companies into our NAVs at this point in time. Okay. Good to know then. You know, you said, and many times you intend to resume the normal course share buybacks. I'm just hoping you can elaborate. Is that just to wipe out dilution from options or could you be more aggressive? I think I've asked this question in past calls, so I'm repeating myself. You know, would you be more aggressive on buybacks here? You seem to think your discount to NAV should be a lot lower. Then if you're not gonna be overly aggressive on the buybacks, why not? Because you seem like you've got quite a bit of liquidity. Yeah. Good question again. Just to be clear, in terms of our intentions, Doug, we do have about CAD 1.6 billion on the balance sheet. You know, Jeff referenced that we'd like to carry in cash and cash equivalents, you know, about 2x our fixed charges. You can calculate the fixed charges from, you know, our disclosure in the MD&A. You know, the 2x fixed is probably between CAD 700 million and CAD 800 million, depending on the quarter. You know, in that range. You're looking at basically a difference of CAD 800 million right now in terms of where we're at. Now, we like to carry a bit of a buffer. The buffer would be, you know, fairly significant at this time. You know, the range that one might expect is anywhere from, you know, 500-700 being available. You know, we haven't been specific on exactly where we will travel over the next little while, but that's the range that we're thinking about. Yeah. That's a way of saying that we are going beyond options. We're not just doing options or mitigating options dilution. We're going, you know, we will opportunistically go into the market and put capital to work and buy shares back and reduce the share count. That's exactly what we're planning to do. That has a lot of benefits, including we're trading at a discount that's pretty high still compared to our underlying value. We like the opportunity just basically on where the shares are going or at least where our businesses are going. The answer to your question is yes. Greg's just kind of played out how the math might work. Perfect. Just on the cash balance, that does not include the CAD 94 million from GP, I don't think, or you can correct me if I'm wrong. What else, like in terms of cash inflows are coming in Q4? There's nothing obvious to me, but I just wanted to see if I'm missing something. Yeah. GP is not closed, and we don't have the cash in the quarter yet. It's in the door in Q4, but it's not in Q3. Okay, perfect. Lastly, just on the standalone investment earnings, CAD 58 million, can you dig a little bit into what drove that? Can you say that again? The standalone earnings, CAD 58 million, what drove that? The standalone, that's Lion. As you know, in the quarter, again, the wonders of consolidation accounting, certainly Lion announced earnings, and they're announcing them today, quite frankly. That call's on right now. That's our share. I think our share is just let me look at my note here. CAD 56 million of their income for the quarter. The income this quarter for Lion had an item in it where they had a revaluation of the Amazon warrants for, I think, well, for our share being CAD 56 million. That was due to obviously the decrease in the value of Lion over the period. That mark became income to Lion. Hopefully that explanation you followed it, but it is the nature of recognizing that decrease in the warrant value that it was issued to Amazon. That's where I was going. It seems like there's some unusual items in there, but that's basically what you're saying. There was something unusual coming through, as a result of the Lion. Yeah. Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jaeme Gloyn from National Bank. Yeah, thanks. I kinda want to follow on that theme and just looking at the alternative and other investments platform. Well, I guess you know a couple of questions on this. First, you know, 2021 has been a pretty solid year from that line item in terms of driving earnings, a couple of course one-time items helping support that performance. I'm just wondering if have you gained like enough scale or have businesses, the underlying businesses and assets gained enough maturity that we should come to expect a bit more earnings contribution from this business on a consistent basis going forward? Or is it still kind of a you know very modestly positive earnings driver? Maybe I can take a start, and then Greg can save me if I err or can help clarify what I said. I think from a GP. If we think of the business as a general partner being the asset manager and then as a provider of seed capital. I think you need to separate those two. As a provider, as an asset manager, when you look at Sagard Holdings, you know, it's got quite a lot of assets and quite a lot of third-party assets, but it's quite a lot of assets under management right now. It's getting to the point where, you know, it can start to contribute. I don't wanna say when. Right now, it's pretty close to break even from a cost and expense point of view, given its scale. As a GP, it will start to contribute if it continues to grow. Of course, the income emerges, you get fees and you have expenses, and then they have carry. How the profit emerges as a GP can be a little lumpy. You get a realization on a private equity position, and all of a sudden you've got carry on it, and some of that goes to the staff, to the management, and then some of it goes to the GP. You know, that we look forward to that, but we haven't been profitable up to this point, but it's getting to the point where it will be. The LP capital, the Sagard capital, is a mix of strategies that are mature, such as the private equity funds in Europe. Sagard Europe III has been. They're doing Sagard Europe IV now in the fundraising. Those are more mature funds. We get realizations for those periodically. The Portage III fintech fund has had realizations that have driven profitability. The profit emergence on the credit fund is more kinda regular, if I can call it that. There's an income stream, although there are recaps and refinancings that can drive. We are earning and will earn money on the LP capital, but the profit emergence is a little lumpier. I think we need, and we've stated it in previous meetings, Jaeme, that we owe it to our investor base to really lay that out. We're not quite there this quarter, but kind of talk about how that profit emerges on the LP. If I flip the Sagard to Power Sustainable Capital, there, the AUM is not quite as developed, and they're a little further away before they reach break even as an asset manager. They need to do some more fundraising. Then, as an LP in that business, you've got energy assets and you've got in effect Chinese equities. Two divergent strategies, but they come from Power's history, which is why we have very strong teams in both areas. The profit emergence on that is quite different as well. Effectively you know, you're earning 8%, 9%, 10%, 11% returns on your LP capital as an LP in the infra funds. Then on the Chinese equity side, well then we can have a discussion about what kind of returns we get in the Chinese markets as an LP. It's been very profitable for us, obviously, over the last 15 years. We've done really well on it. That's giving you some color but not giving you some specific numbers. We're gonna move forward. Greg, you're gonna answer this? Yeah, I'll just add to it, Jaeme, that you know, on slide 18, you know, Jeff was going through the various funds that our proprietary capital or LP capital is held in. A lot of it comes down to you know, vintage when you're looking at the private equity. You know, we, as you know, did the secondary with the Sagard III. Sagard IV is basically just you know, being launched and funded. There are some assets in Sagard IV right now. You know, as you know, though, the return of capital and the private equity businesses will be, you know, three to four years out before we start to see some of the earnings emerge, if you will, from that. They emerge on realizations, right? Private credit, of course, you know, we'll get that as we get our dividend returns from the private credit fund. you know, venture capital, very much the same as the private equity. Royalties more like private credit as well. Power Pacific, the realizations there come as the portfolio is managed for either the market conditions as we saw earlier this year where the markets ran up significantly and there the team in Shanghai realized a lot of gains in, I think it was Q2 that most of the gains were realized. They'll emerge, you know, not on a regular basis but on an intermittent basis. The good thing I'd say about where we have the seed capital is it's in a lot of diverse opportunities. At some point, hopefully, it'll be a little more consistent and they'll balance out each other. It is maturing. As Jeff said, we've promised that we'll give you more insight into that in a future quarter. We will do that. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from Tom MacKinnon with BMO. Yeah. Good morning, Jeff and Greg. The question just with respect to the buyback, I mean, the company seems the leverage is high, certainly higher than normal at Great-West. Why would you be buying back stock when the objective here is to reduce the overall leverage at the group? Just with respect to tax noise in the quarter, Greg, I think you had mentioned something about a CAD 0.03 benefit and then a penny hurt, and I'm not sure which one applied to the third quarter of 2021. If you could just clarify that, please. Thanks. Thanks, Tom. Let me start with the buyback and leverage question, and I'll let Greg add to that and also to answer the tax question or address the tax question. On the buyback side, you know, the leverage at the Power group is consolidated, of course. It's the consolidated leverage of Great-West Life and IGM and everything else we consolidate. The reason that the leverage is elevated is because Great-West Life did a lot of transactions and managed to do that without issuing equity, which we think is a good thing for shareholders. At the Power Corp level, we don't have debt really. We have a lot of cash. We've got preferred shares. We've already talked about our intent. We wanna keep that capital structure base in place. We're gonna work on reducing the costs, as we said in response to a question earlier. We're not looking to reduce, you know, so that's it. We don't have debt. Like, we've got, I think, CAD 250 million of debt is basically across the group. It's 30-year debt. 30-year debt. Right. Thank you very much. We have the cash at Power, and we're gonna return the shares or buy back shares with it, which really doesn't impact the amount of debt we have, of course, but we don't have an opportunity to reduce the debt at Power Corp. That's the short answer. And, and- Yeah. Do the tax thing and then just a follow-up. Sorry. Sure, Tom. The CAD 0.03 benefit was for Q3 2020, and the CAD 0.01 hurt is in the current quarter. That basically is the entire difference between the two quarters. Okay, that's great. When rating agencies look at Great-West, would they also look at Power consolidated? Would that have a factor in terms of the leverage or in terms of their rating for Great-West? If so, then why wouldn't the consolidated leverage at Power matter? Let me take an attempt and then, Greg, you can jump in. Or do you wanna start off? I'm happy to jump on it. Okay, go ahead. You'll correct me if I'm wrong. Okay. The rating agencies look at Great-West Lifeco as their own leverage. The rating agencies look at Power on a consolidated basis. The rating of Power and our group rating can impact the rating of Great-West Lifeco, but it's not through the mechanism you described. It's not that they take the Power Corp debt or the IGM consolidated debt and somehow ascribe it to Great-West Lifeco. They look at Great-West Lifeco on a standalone basis. When they look at Power and they look at our overall group rating, if our rating were to go down several notches, they have kind of rules within a group that you can't have a group rating being too many notches below the subsidiary's rating. They've got If Power got a bunch of downgrades, that could impact Great-West Lifeco's rating, I think is the simple way to put it. When they look at Great-West Lifeco, they look standalone. The end of your question, though, is why wouldn't you reduce your debt at Power Corp? I'll come back to my answer to your previous question. We don't have debt at Power Corp. We've got one series that's 30 years. It would be very expensive to try and redeem that series. The preferred shares that we have outstanding, we're not looking to reduce the base. We're looking to perhaps reduce the cost of it at this point, is the way we're thinking through transactions like we did this quarter. Greg, anything you wanna add to that, or did I put my foot in it or did we get it right? No, you've just proven that you sat through ratings agencies meetings. That's a good thing. It really does start with the group rating, though. You start at the top, and you look for the group rating. Everybody's then measured on their own book, right? Great-West Lifeco is its rating is calibrated based on its particular position. It is influenced by the group rating, but it is not, it is done standalone. That's the same for IGM as well. We could get into more of the subtleties in terms of what's considered to be a strategic holding and what's not considered to be a strategic holding, but I don't think we should go there on this call, because that's probably. If Jeff just gave you the 101 in the ratings and how it works, you know, that's probably, you know, 201 or 301. You know. We won't go there this morning. Okay. In your opinion, the group rating wouldn't be jeopardized by buying back stock. Is that correct? Correct. Right. Okay. That's great. Thanks. Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jeffrey Orr for closing remarks. Okay. Well, I don't have any further questions for Greg, so we will wrap it up. Thank you. If there's no further questions, I just again thank everyone for participating, and we look forward to talk to everybody soon. Look forward to our lots of questions on this call about disclosure around our platforms. Those are good questions, and we will take that input and look forward to coming back and answering those questions in the quarters ahead here. Thank you very much. Operator, that's it. Bring the call to a close. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.