Good morning, and welcome to Quarterhill's Q2 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. On this morning's call, we have Chuck Myers, CEO, and Kyle Chriest, Chief Financial Officer. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session during which analysts are invited to ask questions. To ask a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone to register. Should you require any assistance during the call, please press star zero. Earlier this morning, Quarterhill issued a news release announcing its financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2024. This news release, along with the company's MD&A and financial statements, are available on Quarterhill's website and SEDAR+. Certain matters discussed during today's conference call or answers that may be given to questions could constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated. Risk factors that could affect results are detailed in the company's annual information form and other public filings that are available on SEDAR+. During this conference call, Quarterhill will refer to adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. Please refer to the company's Q2 2024 MD&A for full cautionary notes regarding the use of forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measures. Finally, please note that financial information provided is now in U.S. dollars unless otherwise specified. I will now turn the meeting over to Mr. Myers. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. In terms of the agenda today, I'll discuss the results for the quarter, after which Kyle will take a look at the key financial results. After Kyle, we'll open it up for questions. Q2 summary. Overall, we're pleased with the Q2 results, which were in line with our expectations and showed progress on our goals to drive top-line growth, increase adjusted EBITDA margin, and improve cash flow. Revenue was $41.5 million, up 7.5% from Q2 last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.7 million, down from $2.9 million in Q2 last year, but up from $200,000 in Q1. Cash from operations in Q2 was $802,000, compared to cash used in operations of $6.9 million in Q2 last year. This obviously is a big swing year-over-year and reflects a lot of the work we've done in the past year to strengthen program management, integrate operations, and manage expenses. In fact, this was the first quarter of positive cash from operations for Quarterhill in two years. Our substantial revenue backlog at the quarter end was $500 million, which gives us good revenue visibility for the remainder of 2024 and into subsequent years. Kyle will take a look at these numbers in more details in his section. Q2 business unit review. In Q2, our two business units, tolling and enforcement, executed on their ongoing projects, as well as closed new and follow-on businesses and advanced other opportunities through the sales pipeline. On the tolling side, we made progress on several sections of highway with CTRMA in Texas, as our activity under that contract continues to grow. We've also seen progress with E-470 and OCTA in Orange County as those projects move towards acceptance and operations, respectively. We remain active with our bidding activity, with a focus on both follow-on business and landing new customers. Regarding new customers, we expect to have a couple of bids in by the end of the year, subject to delays in the bidding process that can occur at the customer end. In addition to the work we've done internally to enhance our bidding process over the year, we think that the addition of Red Fox has strengthened our value proposition. We announced the acquisition of Red Fox during Q1, and the transaction closed Q2. As a reminder, Red Fox is a profitable and growing provider of automated vehicle detection and classification software to the tolling industry, but we also believe with applications to our enforcement business as well. AVDC is responsible for the detection, classification, and tracking of a vehicle as it enters and exits tolling facility. In Q2, Red Fox was recognized for its technical prowess, winning two King's Awards for Enterprise, one for innovation and the other in excellence in international trade. The King's Awards are considered very prestigious in the U.K., with King Charles himself involved in the recognition of the winners. The awards recognize outstanding achievement by U.K. businesses in categories such as innovation, international trade, sustainable development, and they've been honoring companies this way since 1965. We're obviously very pleased with the acquisition and to have them as part of the Quarterhill team. As mentioned, we are already working to integrate their Quantum software into our bids, and we see the potential to integrate it with both of our tolling enforcement units. Our enforcement unit delivered solid results in Q2, with this being one of the seasonally strong quarters. The business continues to generate steady and reliable performance with plenty of follow-on, renewal, and new customer contracts. These include new agreements in North and South Dakota, New York, California, and Idaho. Subsequent to quarter end, we announced two international deals, one in South Korea and one in Thailand. Of note, our contract in North Dakota was for our artificial intelligence vehicle classification system used for traffic monitoring. This involves the use of AI video, automatic traffic recorders, or ATRs, that count and classify vehicles, which is essential for highway planning, design, maintenance, and management. As you know from our previous calls, AI and machine learning applications and in ITS are an area of great interest for us going forward, and I'll touch on that shortly. Strategy. Our three-year plan remains focused on leveraging improvements we made in the past year to our project management and contract bidding process to grow our tolling and enforcement units. At the same time, we're looking at three areas where we can strengthen those existing operations while expanding our capabilities and market reach. The first is to leverage our existing footprint and our safety and enforcement expertise in Europe to pursue tolling opportunities. On our last call, I spoke about our participation at the Intertraffic show in Amsterdam, which took place during Q2 and is one of the premier events for the ITS industry. The show gave us an opportunity to advance discussions with customers, prospects, and partners on a broad number of tolling enforcement opportunities throughout Europe, with the addition of Red Fox enhancing our potential on this front. The second area of focus is on software development to support tolling enforcement businesses, as well as our penetration into other verticals. The addition of Red Fox and their Quantum solution helps us to advance our goals there. In long term, we will continue with our buy and build approach to expanding our suite of applications. AI and machine learning will play an important role in the development of our technology roadmap, as will our focus on visual technology and data mining and analytics. We're already active on this front, as I just mentioned, with the North Dakota win. Ultimately, these applications will provide a natural lead-in to our third area of focus, which is logistics. We've had a big development on the AI machine learning front with the addition of our newest board member, which I'll discuss in a moment. On the logistics side, we have a project underway that is going well, and we expect to see the mandate with this customer to expand this year while simultaneously build out our sales pipeline. We are in the early stages of our go-to-market strategy here, but we believe the addressable market is significant and that developing these solutions is complementary to our existing verticals. Integration and rightsizing. A big part of our positive transformation in the last year has been the integration and streamlining of our ITS business, and this work continues, especially on the technology side. As part of our ongoing efforts to drive efficiencies, we announced restructuring with our Q1 results that was effective in Q2. While we have reduced headcount in certain areas of the business where we believe growth will not be impacted, we also continue to strategically add to the team, in particular, expanding our sales team and adding select senior resources to help drive the execution on our three-year plan. Finally, during the quarter, we launched a unified branding campaign throughout the business and unveiled our new look at the Intertraffic show, as I mentioned earlier. The branding brings together our entire portfolio of subsidiaries under the Quarterhill name, with an overhaul of our customer-facing messaging and a new website. A board member. In keeping with the themes of AI and organizational change, we also announced today that Vineet Khosla has joined the Quarterhill board, effective immediately. Vineet is the Chief Technology Officer at The Washington Post, where he's leading their engineering team and is driving force behind their technology, vision, and innovation strategy. Vineet is a pioneering researcher and a leading voice in AI, machine learning, and cloud computing, and has driven significant advancements in these fields. He joined the Post in 2023 and brings an extensive track record as an innovator and executive at some of the world's largest companies. Prior to the Post, Vineet was at Uber for five years, where he was responsible for the development of their map routing engine, which optimized routes and timing. Before Uber, he was at Apple for more than eight years. At Apple, he built the core framework for Siri's AI engine. He was an AI engineer at Siri when it was acquired by Apple in 2010. Those of you that have followed the Quarterhill name for some time may recall that our previously owned business, WiLAN, acquired the original Siri patents in 2016. Vineet played a key role in the development of the technology behind those patents. Finally, he earned a master's in artificial intelligence from the University of Georgia in 2005, so he's not a newcomer to this growing industry. Overall, we're very pleased to have Vineet join the board and look forward to him playing a role in the development of our product roadmap and our push to expand the software side of our business, especially with AI and machine learning. Outlook. Looking forward, our goal is to drive growth for revenue, adjusted EBITDA and capital in 2024 and beyond. We look to achieve this by capitalizing on the progress in our large tolling projects, the steady growth from our enforcement business, the expansion of our technology software footprint, and the opportunity to expand into new markets and verticals. Over time, this will result in the company generating reliable cash and building a strong balance sheet capable of supporting both our organic and acquisitive growth strategies. In closing, we are making progress in improving our financial results, enhancing our software solutions, and optimizing our cost structure. We have a great team at Quarterhill, excellent ITS assets, strong customer relationships, and a significant revenue backlog. We are very well set to be a number one and number two player in the industry, and simply put, that is our goal. With that, I'll turn it over to Kyle. Kyle? Thank you, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. Before we get into the financials, please note that the discussion pertaining to 2023 financials reflects only the results of our ITS business. WiLAN's financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2023, are reflected in the discontinued operation line items in our P&L and cash flow statements, as that business was sold in June 2023. With that, I'll start with a look at revenue in the quarter. Q2 revenue was $41.5 million, up 7.5% from Q2 last year. Year-to-date, revenue was $76.4 million, up 14%. The increase in the two periods was due to strength in our enforcement unit, as well as improved performance from our tolling unit, which generated incremental revenues and had experienced cost overruns in the respective 2023 periods that had negatively impacted revenue. As Chuck touched on in his section, at the end of the quarter, we had significant backlog of $500 million, providing good visibility into revenue for the rest of 2024 and the next several years. Of note, a large portion of the backlog is higher margin contracted maintenance revenue versus implementation revenue. We expect this to result in improved margins as we move through the year. However, as we've said previously, for those tolling projects that have recently moved into the maintenance phase, margins tend to start out lower at the launch date and then rise over a period of a few quarters before stabilizing. Gross margin percentage in Q2 was 21%, compared to 26% in Q2 last year, but up sequentially from 18% in Q1. In general, we expect gross margin percentage to continue to increase as we move through 2024. The year-over-year decrease in Q2 was primarily due to one tolling project that is in the maintenance phase, but experiencing a transitory period of lower than expected margin, which we expect to resolve in the coming quarters. The gross margin percentage decrease was partially offset by continued strong margin performance from our enforcement unit. Total operating expenses for Q2 2024 were $10.8 million, compared to $10.6 million in Q2 2023. Year-to-date, OpEx was $21.2 million, down from $22.2 million in the same period last year. For the quarter, OpEx grew slightly due to higher SG&A, offset in part by lower R&D. There are some key SG&A investments we are making to grow the business, and as I said on our last call, we expect to hold SG&A cost increases for the year to under 10%. The majority of the savings from the streamlining initiative we announced in May with our Q1 results will be reflected inside cost of goods sold. Q2 Adjusted EBITDA was positive for the fifth quarter in a row at $1.7 million, compared to $2.9 million in Q2 last year, and $0.2 million in Q1 of 2024. Year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA was $1.8 million, compared to negative $0.9 million in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA has improved in the year-to-date period due to steady results from the enforcement unit and stronger revenue performance from the tolling unit. We expect adjusted EBITDA to continue to grow and for margins to improve as we move through the year. This will be driven by enforcement unit results in its seasonally stronger quarters from certain tolling projects advancing through the maintenance phase and from others completing the implementation phase. Turning now to the balance sheet. At quarter end, we had adjusted working capital of $68.4 million, compared to $78.9 million at the end of 2023. As we spoke about on our last call, following the IFRS amendment to IAS 1, we are now using adjusted working capital, which is a non-IFRS measure, to highlight the strong working capital position that we have. Adjusted working capital is defined as working capital, adjusted for convertible debentures and the derivative liability. As a reminder, our convertible debentures don't mature until October 30, 2026. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $24 million, compared to $42.7 million at the end of 2023. Of note, payment for the Red Fox acquisition was made in Q2, while other uses of cash included debt repayments and interest expense. So the decline in cash sequentially from Q1 was to be expected. On a positive note, we ended the quarter with a higher cash balance than we had forecasted due to progress billing and collecting on some of our longer-standing unbilled revenue balances. Improving our cash position is a top priority and a key to our strategy. We saw progress on this front in the quarter, generating positive cash from operations of $0.8 million, compared to cash used in operations in Q2 last year of $6.9 million. As Chuck mentioned, this was the first quarter in two years that Quarterhill has generated positive cash from operations. Our outlook for cash in 2024 is that we expect to generate positive cash from operations for the year and to grow the cash balance through year-end. Due to the nature of our business, operating cash flows may vary significantly between periods due to changes in timing and working capital balances, namely with collections and payments. This concludes my review of the financial results, and I'll now turn the call over to the operator for Q&A. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. To withdraw your question, press star two. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Graham Smith from Cormark Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. My first question is just on the expanding sales team or the choice hires that you're making on the sales team. Can you give a bit more color on where you're hiring, specifically? That'd be great. Hi, this is Chuck, by the way. As you may have known, we had kind of significantly cut back on the sales and BD team, so we're starting to strategically hire. B oth in the U.S., and we've actually made a couple hires in Europe as well. That's great. Thanks. And then just on Europe, so now you, you guys are hiring on the, in the sales force a little bit. Can you talk a bit more of the progress that you've made in the quarter, there? Yeah, we continue to streamline the businesses there. As you know, we have basically four different subsidiaries over there, and primarily in the enforcement space, but we're continuing to aggressively look at tolling opportunities there as well. Great. And then switching to just tolling, so can you talk about some of the ramping tolling operations that are going from implementation to operations? Maybe how those are progressing. Progressing quite nicely. We're, you know, it's still a lot of hard work to do, but I think you could see by our numbers, we're making good progress. I think we've significantly improved the relations since I've got here with our customers, and that's been a primary focus of mine to wrap those up. But so far, we're pleased with the way our customer relationships are going, and we're making progress, and we're almost out of the hot water with any problem contracts, and most of them are starting to convert to the maintenance phase at this point. That's great. Thanks. And then just the last one for me, can you maybe just talk about what the sales pipeline looks like in the second half? Are you seeing any particular strength in one area, or is it sort of strong across the business? Any color on that would be really helpful. Yeah, no, we continue to see.. You know, we have a positive pipeline going forward. Even in, you know, in our businesses, we see a pretty significant pipeline ahead. We don't see a lot of headwinds. Typically, the enforcement business is better in the second half of the year, and we suspect or that the tolling will do quite well in the second half as well. Thanks. I'll pass the line. Great. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Todd Coupland from CIBC. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask about a couple things on the backlog. Are you able to give us an idea how much backlog or how much of a moderate growth plan you have already booked in backlog? So if we think—if you think about either the second half of the year or 2025, like, how much visibility do you have to your plan at this point? Well, pretty, pretty strong. I mean, as you know, it takes a long time to win these contracts, so they tend to be very sticky. The enforcement business is growing nicely, and that's obviously more kind of a turn-and-burn business. You get orders, you book them pretty quick, and they go through. But the tolling business, the two combined businesses are roughly still $500 million. We've maintained our backlog. So as we add contracts and we get add-on change orders to our contracts, we've maintained that $500 million of backlog, which I've always thought was quite impressive for a company that's doing, you know, $150 million a year. Yeah, and, and, you know, this is a, this is a little bit off point in terms of your business, but it, it's a, I guess, a macro environment. Salesforce, Marc Benioff has talked about longer lead times, smaller deals, taking longer to close, et cetera. Can you characterize your pipeline in that, in that context? You know, you're obviously selling to governments, not enterprises, but, you know, there are macro questions, 'cause you just talk about like, you know, the size of the deals, time to close deals, versus, let's say, a quarter ago or, or, six months ago. Thanks a lot. I would say we see little impact from that. You know, these are customers. Well, if you take the tolling side of the business, and most of these are customers on the enforcement side, are primarily, you know, a local agency, state agencies, that require this equipment to maintain the roads and the traffic. On the tolling side, our tolling agencies continue to perform very well and generate a lot of cash, and when they need the systems, they need the systems. So I can't say that we see any economic impact in delaying the systems other than the ordinary, normal course of business that, you know, state and local governments go through when they try to issue bids or tenders and protests. But I would say, unlike Salesforce, we don't see experience that impact, and we're a fairly recession-proof business, at least at this level. Yeah, Chuck, I was just gonna sort of take it to that point. So is it, is it a fair assumption to actually take recessionary fears off the table and this business will roll regardless? I would think so. I would think it would be minimal impact. You know, you never say never, but I don't. To the contrary, you know, this business is, they, the agencies love this business 'cause, you know, they need it. It's how they generate cash. So, it's fairly recession, at least resistant, let's put it that way. And then just on the technology, you know, in your prepared remarks, you talked about Red Fox quite a bit. How much of a factor is that in your bids now? And maybe just talk a little, in a little bit more detail on why it's important. I think it's important, you know, maybe we talk about it a little too much 'cause it's kinda got a cool name. But, it's important because it's really the next generation of tolling and vehicle classification. And our focus there really is to get in the future get as much equipment out of the roadbed as we possibly can, because that's where our customers, you know, suffer the most problems, and they get the more wear and tear on the road. And if you can do all of this transaction, provide all the transaction capability out above the roadbed or on the side of the road, that's what our customers are really looking for, and I think Red Fox does a good job getting us to that point. Is it unique in the market? Just talk about its competitive position. Yeah, I would say it's unique in the market. Most of any of the other AVC systems use a lot of instrumentation embedded in the roadway. That's all I had. Appreciate the color. Thanks a lot. All right. Thanks, Todd. Your next question comes from Steven Li from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hey, Chuck, Kyle. I was curious to find out if weather was a factor at all in Q2? Could you say that again, Steven, sir? If, if the weather was a factor in Q2? No, no, we had no impact from weather in Q2. Okay. All right. And then, Chuck, when you speak of strong visibility in the second half, does that also mean the quarterly revenues in the second half is gonna be similar to Q2 or maybe even up from Q2? I'll let Kyle take that question. Yeah, with the strong visibility, we have a lot of our revenues right now that we're looking into the next two quarters to finish up the year underneath our backlog. We have some projected revenues on change orders and things that would be a little less predictable due to the timing of customer award, but the majority of our 2024 projects and projected revenue is in our sight line. We were giving prior guidance that we expect or hope to achieve close to double-digit growth year-over-year in total revenues, and I think we're still getting close to that and projecting there. All right. That's perfect. Thanks. Thanks, Steven. There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Myers for closing remarks. Great. Thank you, operator. With that, thank you everybody for participating in today's call, and we look forward to speaking to you and keep you informed of our progress in the coming months. And as always, I wanna thank our the employees and all of our partners in this business. You know, we, we work hard. We wanna do well for our investors. We wanna grow the company, and I sincerely, sincerely appreciate the time and an effort our, you know, our dedicated employees put into this business, and so thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you.