Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Stella-Jones's third quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will hold a question-and-answer session. To queue up for questions by phone, please press star one. If anyone experiences difficulties hearing the conference call, please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 4th, 2026. I will now turn it over to David Galison, Vice President, Investor Relations of Stella-Jones. Thank you, Vincent, and good morning, everyone. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release reporting our results for the third quarter of 2026. Along with our MD&A, it can be found in the investor relations section of our website at www.stella-jones.com, as well as on SEDAR+. As a reminder, all figures expressed on today's call are in CAD unless otherwise stated. Please note that comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking information, and this information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, please contact the company's relevant filings on SEDAR+. These documents are also available in the investor relations sections of Stella-Jones's website at www.stella-jones.com. Additionally, during this call, the company may refer to non-GAAP measures, which have no standardized meaning under GAAP and are not likely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. For more information, please refer to the company's latest MD&A, available on Stella-Jones's website and on SEDAR+. Lastly, we have prepared a corresponding presentation, which we encourage you to follow along with during this call. I'll now turn the call over to Éric Vachon, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stella-Jones, for a strategic business update, followed by Silvana Travaglini, Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer of Stella-Jones, who will provide a more detailed financial overview. Eric, over to you. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. This quarter once again demonstrated the resilience of demand across our end markets, with wood utility pole volumes continuing to grow. While results were impacted by elevated fuel costs, we remain focused on what we control, executing on strategic priorities that establish a foundation for improved profitability in 2027 and beyond. As we outlined at our investor day last year, 2026 has been about building a more scalable and efficient operating platform. In the third quarter, that meant sharpening our focus on three key priorities. First, pursuing continuous improvement initiatives to reinforce operational excellence. Second, advancing Class 1 contract renewals and deepening long-term customer partnerships. And third, scaling our steel business to capture the significant opportunity we see ahead. These three priorities provide us with a clear strategic direction to build on the underlying strengths of our business. I will now touch on each. Across our operations, we continue to pursue improvement. Over the course of 2025 and 2026, we have been advancing a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening our business. These initiatives and work streams are all centered around optimizing our operating platform and driving margin expansion. Today, we are bringing these efforts together under a single coordinated Performance Optimization Program with clear initiatives and measurable targets. The program combines our previously disclosed railway ties and wood utility pole network optimization initiatives, where execution is already underway, with additional cost-saving measures aimed at enhancing operational performance and efficiency. The railway ties and wood utility pole initiatives alone are expected to generate CAD 20 million-CAD 27 million in annualized savings and incremental profitability. These additional measures include deploying continuous improvement practices, implementing real-time production tracking, standardizing work processes, and daily operational reviews to increase equipment throughput and labor productivity. Also included are the continued application of automation and artificial intelligence into operation production planning, logistics, and maintenance processes. Taken together, we expect the program to deliver up to CAD 100 million in cumulative cost savings and incremental profitability over the next three years, combined with the benefits building progressively each year as initiatives are implemented. Based on an annual run rate of approximately CAD 30 million, this represents an improvement in EBITDA margin of almost 1%. In Q2, we indicated that we were planning the next phase of optimizing across our utility pole network. In Q3, we advanced from planning into execution, taking targeted actions to consolidate wood utility pole production into single-product facilities and shift production to higher-efficiency facilities to fully capitalize on recent capital investments. These actions are advancing our transition towards a more streamlined operating model designed to increase productivity, capture meaningful annual efficiencies, and support margin expansion. While these initiatives involve near-term transition activities, they free up effective capacity and position our business to capture higher margins and enhance returns as volume continues to grow. With regards to contract renewals and deepening long-term customer relationships, we continue to make good progress across our Class 1 contract renewals. Building on the contract win we discussed last quarter, we have secured additional multi-year commitments and continue to advance renewals with other key customers. These discussions are supporting our core cross tie business while creating opportunities to increase our participation in higher value products and services such as bridge structures, switch timbers, pre-plated ties, and treating services. Importantly, we are well-positioned to capture these opportunities. Investments in automation and our broader product capabilities allow us to efficiently serve a greater share of our customers' needs and support profitable growth. Overall, the contract renewal cycle is strengthening our long-term customer relationships and advancing our strategy to grow the railway tie business through more profitable product mix and product services. In steel structures, our order book continues to build, providing a strong volume visibility to fill our expanded capacity. Beyond the long-term contracts secured earlier this year, which alone accounts for approximately one-third of Candiac's capacity over the next decade, we continue to secure additional customer orders that heavily commit our production schedule well into 2027 and 2028. Furthermore, our capacity expansion in Candiac continues to advance to meet strong transmission demand, and we achieved several key milestones in our U.S. greenfield development during the third quarter. Work at our future production facility in Fayetteville, Tennessee, advanced from design and engineering to prepare the existing on-site structure. We are advancing recruitment for plant management to have a team in place before the end of the year. The project remains on schedule for commissioning in late 2027, with a phased ramp-up to full production by the end of 2028. Commercial interest continues to be strong. Existing U.S. customers remain aligned to place pilot qualifying orders ahead of the commercial ramp-up. In addition, growing Canadian transmission demand ensures we have long-term flexibility to optimize production allocation between Candiac and Fayetteville. When completed, Fayetteville will add approximately 20,000 tons of high-capacity lattice production, positioning Stella-Jones as a leading domestic supplier to U.S. utilities, expanding our presence in the North American lattice tower market, and supporting profitable growth in our steel structure business. As we invest to support our long-term growth, we remain equally focused on driving stronger performance across our existing operations. With our contract renewals progressing well, the steel structure expansion in Candiac nearly complete, and the actions we've taken over the course of the year, we are well-positioned to drive higher returns as we enter 2027. I will now turn to a performance overview of our main product categories, starting with utility products. Performance in the quarter was anchored by sustained momentum in wood utility poles and another solid contribution from our cross arms business, where we have found success with our expanded product offering. In wood utility poles, volume growth remains solid in the third quarter, with a positive gain in the period, keeping our year-to-date performance in line with our mid-single-digit volume outlook. Importantly, this resilient demand comes despite a challenging broader macroeconomic backdrop. Utilities are navigating elevated costs across their wider procurement baskets alongside higher interest rates, fuel costs, and general inflation, which can weigh on overall utility capital allocation. This environment notwithstanding, wood utility poles continue to represent an essential non-discretionary component of ongoing maintenance, reliability, and storm hardening programs, demonstrating the structural resilience of our core business. Turning to pricing, the market conditions remain broadly stable across our customer base. Variation in pricing continued to be driven primarily by regional species and product mix, reflecting a higher proportion of southern yellow pine poles. This shift largely reflects customer species preferences and capital allocation decisions as utilities continue to navigate a broader rise in costs across their operations. Turning to steel structures, third quarter performance continued to be impacted by a lower throughput and a more gradual ramp-up associated with our capacity expansion and modernization program at the Candiac facility. We reached the peak of the plant overhaul during the quarter, and we are seeing steady tangible improvements across the shop floor as new automated lines are released into production. We are actively working through the final stages of commissioning, and we remain focused on ramping our daily throughput towards our doubled run rate of 20,000 tons by late Q1 2027. Most importantly, customer demand for lattice transmission towers remains strong, and the strategic rationale for this investment is fully supported by our commercial success, including leveraging our customer base to deliver top-line synergies. Turning to railway ties. Third quarter market dynamics were consistent with trends seen earlier this year. Lower Class 1 volumes continued to be largely offset by continued strength and healthy project activity in the commercial market, supported by U.S. government funding, with the contract renewal cycle continuing to yield significant progress in Q3. We secured our core baseline, locked in higher commitments for higher-margin products, and invested in automation to drive profitable volume growth over the multi-year horizon. From a profitability standpoint, a more supportive business and product mix and our ongoing efficiency initiatives drove an improvement in railway tie margins, both in the third quarter and on a year-to-date basis. In parallel, our network optimization initiatives for railway ties continue to advance on schedule, ensuring our operational footprint remains cost-efficient, properly balanced, and well-positioned to support sustainable margin improvement heading into 2027. Finally, turning to residential lumber. Sales volume in the third quarter were in line with prior year levels, while pricing was lower. During the quarter, the market price of lumber rose, and consistent with what we said back in August, we implemented price increases later in the quarter, which were largely not reflected in Q3 margins. With these higher selling prices now established, our pricing and margin profile are better positioned as we move into Q4 and into 2027. With that, I will turn the call over to Silvana, who will provide an update on our financial performance in Q3. Silvana? Thank you, Éric, and good morning, everyone. Today, we reported third quarter sales of CAD 979 million, a CAD 21 million increase compared to the same period last year. This growth was led by utility products, which benefited from the continued volume gains in wood utility poles and a solid contribution from our Crossarm acquisition. These increases were partially offset by a shift in wood utility pole product mix and temporary downtime related to the ramp-up of the steel structure capacity expansion project in Candiac. Our railway tie business demonstrated resilience, as solid commercial volumes offset the lower Class 1 demand. The decrease in our Q3 railway tie sales was largely explained by relatively higher TSO volumes. In residential lumber, demand remained steady, but sales were impacted by the lag in adjusting sales price to the rising lumber and fuel costs during the quarter. Year to date, sales were CAD 2.812 billion compared to CAD 2.765 billion in the prior year period. This CAD 47 million increase was primarily driven by the accretive contribution from our 2025 acquisition and the continued strength in wood utility poles, where volumes were up 5% year to date. These positive contributors helped mitigate a CAD 20 million foreign exchange translation headwind, the decrease in the market price of lumber, and lower Class 1 railway ties activity. In our wood utility business, solid volume expansion was partially moderated by lower spot pricing and product mix. Turning to utility products. Third quarter sales reached CAD 513 million, up 7% compared to the same period last year. The increase was driven by a CAD 33 million contribution from the Crossarm acquisition and a 3% volume growth in wood utility poles, achieved against a tougher comparison as wood pole volumes began accelerating in the second half of last year. Partially offsetting this growth was lower pricing in wood poles, largely due to a product mix shift towards lower-priced SYP poles and softer sales in steel structures. Throughput at our Candiac steel structure facility continued to be impacted by the capacity expansion project. The expansion is nearly complete, with only one machine to be received in December. As a result, we expect to see an operational improvement in the fourth quarter, with the facility now targeting to achieve its full run rate and double its capacity by the end of Q1 2027. In railway ties, the third quarter sales reached CAD 208 million compared to CAD 211 million in the prior year period. Similar to trends seen earlier this year, lower Class 1 demand was offset by continued solid activity in the non-Class one market. The pricing variance in the quarter was almost entirely explained by a higher weighting of TSO volumes, representing over 10% of our Class 1 shipments during the quarter. While railway tie sales were down slightly in the quarter, margin dollars were essentially flat to last year and up year to date, resulting in an expansion of margin percentage. Beyond the impact of TSO, the profitability of railway ties continued to benefit from a better product mix as well as ongoing operational efficiency across the ties network. As we head into the fourth quarter, it is worth noting that activity is expected to decline, as certain Class 1 programs were substantially complete by the end of Q3, and we anticipate less commercial activity during a seasonally lower period. Turning to residential lumber. Our third quarter sales were CAD 196 million compared to CAD 201 million in the third quarter last year. Demand remains solid, with volumes tracking in line with prior year levels. The CAD 5 million decrease in sales was driven by pricing, reflecting a temporary timing lag in adjusting sales price. Turning to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was CAD 159 million, or 16.2% of sales, compared to CAD 171 million, or 17.8% last year. The margin decrease was driven primarily by higher fuel costs of approximately CAD 10 million and the timing lag in residential lumber, where we implemented price increases later in the quarter in response to rising market lumber costs. Excluding the impact of higher fuel costs and residential lumber pricing lags, our third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin would have exceeded 17%. On a year-to-date basis, excluding these same items along with the site-specific costs noted in Q2, our margin would have been at the lower end of our target range. Within utility products, the margin impact from a higher weighting of SYP was more than offset by the solid volume gains in poles and the incremental earnings from Brooks. While SYP carries a lower average selling price, demand was especially solid. With over 60% of our treating capacity dedicated to SYP poles, our extensive network uniquely equips us to capture this volume and service utilities across all the major species. During the quarter, we recorded CAD 32 million of asset impairment and restructuring costs, mainly as a result of actions we took to optimize our wood utility poles network and better position the business for long-term operational efficiency and improved profitability. Including the measures taken in Q2, total network optimization and restructuring charges for the first nine months of the year reached CAD 64 million, of which CAD 43 million represents non-cash asset impairments. Consistent with our non-GAAP definitions, these one-time charges were excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Looking ahead, we do not anticipate any further significant impairment and restructuring charges at this time. Moving on to cash flows. During the quarter, we generated solid cash from operations of CAD 158 million, supported by favorable working capital performance. Inventory levels declined seasonally, with a more pronounced reduction in railway ties, reflecting a shift in sales mix towards a higher proportion of TSO volumes, consistent with the trend seen in Q2. We reduced our net debt by almost CAD 200 million during the first nine months of the year, bringing leverage down to 2.4 times despite lower profitability. This debt reduction increased our available liquidity, and we ended the quarter with CAD 836 million on hand. Consistent with the capital allocation framework we outlined at our investor day, we announced the renewal of an NCIB program, preserving flexibility to repurchase shares. We will continue to assess repurchases alongside our broader capital priorities, including our leverage position and investment in long-term growth. Overall, our third quarter results underscore the resilience of our cash generation and the strength of our balance sheet. We remain focused on continuous improvement and efficiency initiatives that will strengthen the long-term performance of our infrastructure-focused businesses. Solid cash generation, stable leverage, and strong liquidity continue to provide us with the flexibility to invest in growth and pursue our strategic priorities. With that, I will turn it back to Éric for his concluding remarks. Thank you, Silvana. We are pleased with the progress we continue to make to further position Stella-Jones as a provider of critical infrastructure products. Our focus remains firmly on the areas within our control, serving our customers, pursuing continuous improvement initiatives to reinforce our operational excellence, and maintaining the disciplined approach to capital allocation that has supported our success over time. M&A has long been an important part of Stella-Jones' growth, and we have a strong track record of expanding our business through disciplined acquisitions. The two acquisitions completed in 2025 build on this foundation, leveraging our existing capabilities and customer relationships to broaden our offering and increase our relevance to utility customers. As we continue to deploy efforts to generate strong cash flow and reduce leverage, we expect to create additional capacity to pursue attractive M&A opportunities, which will remain an important part of our long-term growth strategy. We remain focused on realizing these growth opportunities while strengthening the efficiency and profitability of the existing business. To conclude, our key messages are clear. Demand across our infrastructure markets remains healthy. We are building a more streamlined operating platform, and our financial flexibility continues to strengthen, providing capacity to advance multiple avenues for growth, including disciplined M&A that support our long-term strategy. Looking beyond 2026, the ongoing benefits of our Performance Optimization Program, combined with our ability to implement pricing pass-throughs and expand contributions for higher value products and scale our steel business, are expected to enhance margins to support return to our targeted range of 17.5%-18.5% over our three-year outlook period. We are proud of our team and the commitment, discipline, and excellence in execution they continue to demonstrate across the business. Their relentless focus on serving our customers while continuously finding ways to improve how we operate and execute has been a driving force behind our success. Their efforts have positioned us well to build on this momentum, capitalize on the opportunities ahead, and continue delivering sustainable value for our customers and shareholders. With that, I will now open the line for questions. Thank you, Éric. As a reminder, to queue up for questions by phone, please press star one. We have your first question comes from James McGarragle from RBC. Please go ahead. Hey, appreciate you having me on. Can you just provide a little bit more detail this morning on the Performance Optimization Program? So, you quantified the CAD 30 million per year, but can you just provide a little bit more detail on the specific initiatives that are going to make up that CAD 30 million per year? Then as a quick follow-up to that, I guess, is the right way to think about this now, a 20% EBITDA margin in 2029? If we kind of look at where consensus is for top line in 2029, that kind of implies greater than CAD 800 million of EBITDA. Is that kind of like the informal target that we should be thinking about toward the end of the decade? James, I want to start with your first question and providing more details on our Performance Optimization Program. But first, I would like you to help me understand your comment on the 20% margin in 2029. Yes. CAD 30 million per year implies roughly 1% improvement in margin. So, if we look at a 17.5% EBITDA margin, ex all the issues you have in 2026, and just add 1% onto that each year, that would imply, call it a 20%, 21% EBITDA margin in 2029. I see. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. So, essentially, let's clarify that point. Essentially, what we're communicating is it's a recurring saving every year. So, it's like, if you think about 2027, 2028, 2029, in this example, it would be 30, 30, with a total of 100 after three years, but it's not 100 in the last year. I don't know if that helps you, if that clarifies the point for you. Yes. That clarifies that question. Okay. Good. Let me go back to the first part of your question. To give you a bit of context, last year at the investor day, we introduced continuous improvement as well as creating an engineering and project management office within Stella-Jones. That also combined with the fact that we completed our ERP implementation last year, putting Stella-Jones on one unique platform across the organization to help us better monitor and create KPIs and metrics. If we think about where we're at today, that has led us to one of our key initiatives, which we initiated discussions earlier in the year, which is our network optimization for the ties and poles, which gives us that range of 20-27. If you think about the 30 we talked about, you probably have a, call it a 22-25 out of that. Other initiatives are coming along, the fact that we have a better system in place. We definitely have continuous improvement activities going on at our facilities. For example, we did some exercises at some of our tie treating facilities to increase throughput at our treating activities. We're also leveraging our system now to find efficiencies in our transportation logistics system as to how can we better move our products between facilities to finish good yards to customers in a more efficient and more cost-effective way. These are a few examples of how we're putting together a lot of initiatives under this Performance Optimization Program to convey the message just today. We're sort of obviously branding it to give us a chance to talk about it and socialize it, but that's how we're thinking about it. Hopefully, that's helpful for you. Yeah, that is. Appreciate it. Then just on the utility poles, can you just talk about the shift to SYP? Is that something that you're viewing as temporary, or is that something more structural as utilities look for potentially lower-priced pole volumes? After that, I can turn the line over. Thank you. Thank you, James. Maybe two items to think about when you reflect about our sales mix. One is, we did see this quarter, certain southern yellow pine customers be more active, so have greater demand or greater growth demand than what we see in our other wood species. That would be part of the explanation of the mix. But we're also seeing certain of our customers preferring southern yellow pine, as it's a good product, it performs well, but it is a bit more cost-efficient for our customers to, if they think about their capital allocation and how they're thinking about their cost structures. So, we have seen a shift of some customers preferring the southern yellow pine versus other species. Thank you. My pleasure. Next question comes from Hamir Patel from CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Eric, I wanted to follow up on that southern yellow pine comment there. So, if volumes for wood poles are still growing mid-single digits, what might that imply for the category's sales growth comps in Q4 and 2027 as well, if you have that dynamic of negative mix maybe persisting for a couple quarters? I guess, thank you, Hamir. If I think about the previous question, your question focuses on the same elements, but you are talking about our sales. In there, what I would like to add when you talk about our sales metrics is the fact that on a year-over-year basis, we have been comparing ourselves to some pricing that has more pressure compared to, let's say, 2026 to 2025. That has subsided, so we have discussed of seeing our spot market for southern yellow pine from a pricing perspective be stable, I want to say, for the last three, four quarters. We have pretty much lapped ourselves now with the pricing pressures year over year. When I think about Q4, I think that that pricing pressure will have gone away in a sense, and we would benefit from the volume growth, assuming, of course, that we are going to hold that 5% volume growth for the balance of the year. Okay. But that negative mix to southern yellow pine, would that offset the volumes, or you would still see some low single-digit growth? It would still be mid-single-digit growth, Hamir, because we need to maintain that 5%, if you want. Right. Okay. That's helpful. With respect to the multi-year EBITDA margin range, the 17.5%-18.5%, would you expect to be in that range for 2027? If I think about our Performance Optimization Program and the cadence at which we're implementing some of these initiatives, and if you've noticed that the last slide sort of gave us a bit of the roadmap on how we get back to that range, I think it'll be a progression in 2027. I think we should be over the 17% mark, but it'll be a progression over time to get back in that range, and probably a bit more towards 2028. The other factor, I guess, I want to make sure that I want to highlight is the fact that we've seen these fuel cost increases manifest themselves, I want to say, as of Q2, and they're ongoing. Year over year, we have not seen them in Q1. Assuming fuel costs, prices remain at the same level, we should see similar headwinds in Q1. As you know very well, our business has the opportunity for pass-throughs, and we have clauses with our customers, but it's a slower-moving target, right? It's an annual renewal, so we'll get to adjust next year where cost pressures that we're seeing in 2026, cost pressures from 2027 will get adjusted in 2028, so that also contributes to the cadence at which we can reach our target range percentage. Éric, with respect to the fuel costs, you highlighted it as sort of CAD 10 million headwind in Q3. I realize there's these pass-throughs, but is there a portion of that that you likely are not able to pass through, just given the way the contracts are structured? Obviously, 75% of our total pole sales are under long-term contracts where we do have these pass-through clauses, and we will be able to have discussions with our customers next year. 25% is on the spot market, and that will be definitely a market dynamic. Will it be 100% of it? We want to remain competitive in the market. It is going to depend what our competitors do. I believe we will be able to pass through a portion of those cost increases, but my sense today is most likely not 100% of that cost increase. Okay. Fair enough. Just the last question before I turn it over. With respect to the CAD 100 million cost program, I think you sort of referenced over the next three years. Is that sort of by the end of 2028, you would hit that run rate? How much has already been captured through Q3? Very little Q3, maybe a bit in Q4 as we restructured and making those adjustments, and now we are getting to the fourth quarter, which is lower volumes, especially for the railway tie business. I would not bake in any potential upside on margin for this year. Definitely next year, we would have a good proportion out of that. If I want to think of a cadence under CAD 100 million, could it be, making an example up, could it be CAD 25 million, CAD 27 million next year, CAD 30 million, CAD 32 million the year after, hitting CAD 35 million in the third year? Something along those lines? Okay, great. Thanks, Tyler. I will turn it over. Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Tupholme from TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Éric, just to pick up on that last comment there about the cadence for the optimization-related savings. The figures you gave, 2025, 27, for example, next year, 30, 32, and then 35, is that the amount you would expect to realize within the year, or is that by the end of the year you're at that run rate? Well, obviously, we're rolling out the programs. We've done a lot of meaningful work on the railway tie part. Utility poles is being deployed in Q3 and Q4. I want to say we would hit that run rate in the back half of next year, Michael. Okay. Not trying to get too precise here, but if you hit it in the back half, the full year's benefit would be a little bit less than those figures you just quoted within each of those years. Is that the right way to think about it? Could be slightly lower, yes. I think, as we ramp up, it'll pick up. But since we've done some meaningful work, the team has been very focused on this over the last five, six months. I think it's a cautious assumption, I guess. Okay. Got it. Thank you. And sorry, maybe this maybe could have been the first question, but just to be 100% clear, these are pre-tax, this is CAD 100 million of pre-tax savings that you are targeting? Yes, it is. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Just wanted to understand the Candiac expansion a little bit more. So, it sounds like the benefit of the additional volumes has been slightly delayed, if I am hearing the description of where you are at. I guess that would be the first question, just to kind of confirm that, and then maybe if you can sort of help us understand, what should we expect in terms of additional contribution from that expanded capacity in the fourth quarter? And I think you said, fully up and running by the end of the first quarter. So, is Q2 the first quarter where you get the full benefit throughout the entire quarter? All the equipment has been received and is in place on the shop floor of the facility, except for one piece of equipment that is getting delayed and we will receive early December. So, the ramp-up has been slower than expected as we are installing machines and making sure there is proper interfaces with our IT systems, because the equipment is quite sophisticated and gathers a lot of data and metrics, which is actually very good for us for KPIs and to monitor operational performance. But today, I want to say, as of the end of September, we have been consistently ramping up volume with the existing equipment and training the employees on all shifts. So, to your question, the last piece of it, or part of your question, the last piece of equipment received in December will be installed in December, commissioned early in the year. We would be at full cadence of operations by the end of Q1. That would be my understanding. We will be very well on our way by the end of this year. I do expect November, December to be at a much higher cadence. Understanding that we are aiming 20,000 tons a year cadence, we will be very close to that full potential cadence. This one piece of equipment is preventing us at this point. Okay, got it. You had mentioned earlier, you talked about the long-term commitment you secured for some of that expanded capacity. Where are you at now in terms of fully selling out that additional capacity at Candiac? How much is committed? How much is yet to be committed? What is the line of sight on getting that commitment? Right If it is not all committed already? As I mentioned, we have one contract for 10 years that covers 30% of the capacity. We are fully booked for 2027, and 2028 is filling up fast. I want to think that by the next time we talk, we would be very close to having that capacity sold for 2028. We are quoting a lot of projects currently. A lot of interest from Canadian utilities. Our current federal government has gotten our utilities focused on Buy Canadian, which is definitely positively impacting us. Lots of interest for what we do, which fits very well with Fayetteville coming online, because I do believe that at one point we're going to have to shift some U.S. customer requirements back into Tennessee, where they were. We might be quoting them out of the Candiac facility, but it very well might get shifted back into Tennessee, because we're seeing Canadian customers have a very strong appetite for projects. Okay. That's all very helpful. I will get back in the queue. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Your next question comes from Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Just to be sure on the Performance Optimization Program, my understanding is that you kept the long-term EBITDA margin target unchanged at 17.5% and to 18.5%. Would it be fair to say that it's not much incremental to the It doesn't allow you to go over that targeted range with this CAD 100 million initiatives over three years? Is it the right way to think about it? For now, Benoit, it's the right way to think about it. With what we put forward today, it's a good way to look at it. Okay. We will obviously be Okay bringing back this topic over time to be able to talk more about it, and we'll be maturing the project. But your assumption is right. Okay, got it. For utility pole, it looks like the organic growth was down 1%. Could you break that down into steel structure this quarter, volume, and pricing for wood pole? I understand the comment that volume on the wood pole side is mid-single digits so far year to date, but I would be looking for between those three, please. Yeah. Thank you, Benoit, for that. I will let Silvana take that question. Benoit, I believe we had put a slide in the presentation where we break out the steel structures to show that the impact in the quarter was a CAD 7 million reduction in sales. It was actually a plus CAD 1 million for our wood utility poles on an organic basis. We had mentioned volumes were plus 3%. Pricing, because of the mix, was down about, let us call it, a little 2% or just about that. Oh, okay. That is great color. With respect to the, let us say, the comment around spot pricing, how could it impact the upcoming contract renewals on the utility side? Is there a risk to see some lower pricing with the upcoming contract renewal, or it is mostly stable in terms of spot pricing? For spot pricing, I do believe we have reached a normalized level at this point. I do not think we were not expecting more pressures. Therefore, it helps our conversation with contract renewals with customers. Do not forget that for contract customers, there is a suite of value-added services from logistics and storage and finished good yards that are also part of the mix, which is highly value added and appreciated by our customers. That helps support our views on pricing when we talk to our contract customers. Okay, that is great. With respect to the CAD 10 million impact from fuel, how much is related to transportation costs versus preservative, and which segment is more impacted? Any thoughts about whether you see an opportunity to pass them through to customers at maybe a faster rate? Approximately, we are estimating that we can. About 75% is a pass-through, more or less, we believe. Most of our cost, being freight or preservative, is embedded in our inventory cost. Obviously, it is an opportunity for us to have the conversation with the customers. We believe that 75% will get passed through. Maybe if I could add, Benoit, the majority of those costs, we would say, is preservative costs. That is why, to Éric's point, that is why we are able to pass them through. Very little of that amount is transport and all the rest, like the fuel that we need for our mobile equipment and for the rest. I just wanted to add that. Okay, so it's mostly preservative and a bit of transportation. Yes. Okay. Maybe last one for me, free cash flow expectation for Q4. Could you talk whether any expectation in terms of working capital movement for Q4, and any thoughts about the free cash flow going into the fourth quarter? Yeah. Typically, in Q4, we do get a cash inflow from our ARs. Obviously, we collect a stronger Q3 sales versus the lower Q4 sales. So, we typically see an over CAD 100 million inflow in Q4, offset in part by some of the inventory build. So, we're still expecting our working capital to be sort of a net inflow of almost CAD 100 million for the year. Year to date, we're at CAD 50 million. We could, I think, expect another CAD 15 million in the last quarter. In terms of free cash flow, consistent, I think, with what we've said. I think we're currently probably at a conversion, an EBITDA conversion of probably over 60%. I think that will be maintained by, I think, Q4. Okay, that's great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Benoit. Your next question comes from Martin Pradier from Veritas. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my question. Just on Candiac, could you tell us a little bit about what was the volume this quarter and how do we think to the volume in Q4 and Q1, like in 1,000 tons or whatever metric you have? We've been, I want to say through Q2, Q3, we've been running, I want to say, something around 80% of or sorry, maybe 50%-60% of the capacity. Obviously, there's disruption on the shop floor. We'll be ramping up to 80% of capacity, so 80% of that 20,000 tons, if you want, by Q4, and then hitting the 100% cadence throughout Q1 of next year. Okay. I should expect like a 20% increase quarter-over-quarter in terms of the volumes? Yes. Okay. That gives us a good idea. In terms of Brooks, the margins on that, have they been similar to the other margins, or is there any difference? Definitely comparable to our utility products division in terms of margin. Yes, they're definitely at that level, so helping our corporate average for sure. Okay. On the treatment, you said that this quarter, the treatment was about 10%. How does that compare to other quarters? I don't have the context there. Well, Silvana, you want to explain the impact of treating services? I think that's an interesting point to clarify. Yeah. So, it's the treating services only for railway ties, just to make sure we're talking about the same, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So basically, yeah, so we said anywhere going forward, there's one particular customer that has indicated their preference for treating services only. So, we mentioned in Q2 last year that we're looking anywhere between 7% and 10%, probably is the expected volumes of TSO that we expect. When we look in the past, that number was definitely below 5%, and even smaller probably in the past. It's really more of a more recent sort of shift from the black tie to the TSO preference for one of the customers. Okay. So that is what is impacting it, because in the past it was close to 5%, let's say, and now it's close to 10%. It would have been less depending on the quarters. Perfect. Thank you very much. That's all my questions. Thank you, Martin. Your next question comes from Maxim Sytchev from National Bank. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Good morning, Maxim. Most questions were already asked, but I just had one clarification around the covenant being bumped up to four from 3.75. I was wondering, is that a function of telegraphing potential M&A, NCIB, or is it just how the restructuring math is being treated by the banks? Just trying to get any color there. Thank you so much. Yeah. Well, I mean, essentially, as we went out for renewal of our credit facility, for our profile of a company credit rating, that's what the market offers, but we're not signaling anything. It's not as if we came in with a request to increase it. It was offered as part of a renewal, and obviously, we'll take any flexibility we can. Not that we need that much indebtedness, to be honest, but that's essentially it. Silvana, I don't know if you want to. No, that's it. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you so much. Thank you, Maxim. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Next question comes from Christian Reiter from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Hey, Éric and Silvana. Just a quick question on capital allocation. I mean, your shares are trading even below levels where you've historically repurchased stock. Just trying to get a sense on how you're thinking about the buyback here versus M&A and organic investments. You just have substantial liquidity obviously on the balance sheet here. Yes. Yeah, thank you, Christian. As we said, pretty much in terms of our strategy, and obviously buybacks are a part of our capital allocation strategy, but are a function of the leverage ratio and the pipeline of M&A that we see. Currently our leverage is still sitting, because of the lower profitability, a little bit at the higher end of the range at 2.4. Given the growth opportunities that we're working on, we think it's prudent at this point to renew the program, to have it available for us, but to keep that in mind before making any decisions on repurchasing. Yeah, that's great color. Thank you. Just on inventory and working CapEx, given the network optimization and consolidation, is there any potential for structurally reducing your inventory requirements? Is there any cash that could come from that? So definitely, as there is cost savings, we would hope that that would translate directly into cash savings also. That is the expectation. So that CAD 100 million would, over the three years, up to CAD 100 million would be cash savings. In terms of working capital investments, I do not see any specific impact. Also, just even in terms of investments needed for these initiatives, there is nothing significant there to highlight. Got it. Thanks so much for the color. I will turn it over. Next question comes from Jonathan Goldman from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, team, and thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just circling back to the mix of southern yellow pine, are you able to quantify how much of the mix of wood poles that was this quarter relative to, I guess, last quarter, or what a historical level would be? Do you think mix is stabilized, or is it possible that we can actually increase the percentage of southern yellow pine? Well, so one thought I shared earlier was part of the mix this quarter in particular was demand from southern yellow pine customers being more important, if you want, or the growth being more important than the other wood species. So that will shift over time depending on customer projects and different investments and their requirement in certain profile of product. So that can definitely shift over time. As far as quantifying it, I do not want to ignore the first part of your question, but we do not necessarily disclose that level of detail, Jonathan. Silvana, you want to add something? Okay. Fair. Yeah. We mentioned, Jonathan, I believe in my part of the script that SYP is an important part of our network, and it represents about 60% of our pole capacity. So in terms of it increasing, I think it would be a little bit Always possible, but I think at 60%, I think we have got a good share of that. Yeah, good point. Okay, that makes sense. On the point about some customers growing faster, they use southern yellow pine. On the ones that may have used it as an alternative to be a little more cost-effective, is there a structural advantage of southern yellow pine versus your typical species like Douglas fir that makes it a better application for utility poles, or are they kind of fungible? No, not really. Each wood species and each size and class has a predetermined strength. It really comes down to the engineers at our customers that are designing the lines that select the products they need. There might be some challenges for transmission-type products because southern yellow pine would not be the very common species for transmission. It would typically be Douglas fir or western red cedar that grow on the West Coast of Canada and the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. But other than that, it's a very good product. I mean, we sell it across North America. Some Canadian utilities actually use it. So it's readily available, and we've got a very deep network there to be able to support demand. Okay, got it. And Silvana, could you repeat the comments you made in the prepared remarks about the margins? They would be at the low end if it weren't for a couple of issues in the quarter. Could you break out the issues, the impact at Delta, how much was the inflation or the inefficiencies and the relative impact on the delta to what you said previously? Yeah, to clarify, for the quarter, we called out the fuel impact and the residential lumber pricing lag, and we said without those impacts, we would be a little bit over 17% year to date. If we take those two items but also include the site-specific items that we noted in Q2, there, on a year-to-date basis, we would have been at the lower end of our range. Yeah, and other than what we broke out, I guess, in the presentation slides, that gives you perhaps an indication of impacts. I did not break out in the script any further those elements. Would those comments be applicable to the quarter as well as year-to-date in terms of relative impact? For the quarter, the relative impact of fuel costs is definitely the bigger piece with the CAD 10 million impact that we noted. Okay, thanks for the color. I'll get back to you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Tupholme from TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking the follow-up, but just two things here. One thing, just picking up a little bit on the last line of questioning about the SYP and the mix impact in the quarter. I understand that you don't think SYP as a proportion of the total sales necessarily gets a lot larger from here, but is that still a headwind in the fourth quarter, just as far as the mix impact and the pricing, and then what that means for pricing in the fourth quarter for utility products? Perhaps just to keep in mind the seasonality impact, right? I mean, SYP basically is deliveries could be done all year long versus the other species, which are impacted more by weather. Just that, just typically Q4 would be a higher weighting of SYP just because of that, of the period of the seasonality of Q4. Okay. Maybe just leaving aside Candiac for a second and the fact that you probably get a bit more volume coming from the expansion there in the fourth quarter versus the third. But outside of that, is the dynamic in the fourth quarter kind of similar to what we saw in the third quarter for utility products as far as some volume growth on the wood pole side, but you've got this negative mix issue hurting pricing on the wood pole side? Does that look similar in the fourth quarter? Yeah, I would agree with that, Michael. Okay, thank you. Last one is just on railway ties. It sounds like you think the TSO sort of contribution here in that 10-ish percent range is maybe it kind of holds in at that level and doesn't necessarily change too much. How do we think about organic growth in this segment as we get into next year? Because you're not going to necessarily, assuming that's true with TSO, you're not going to necessarily have any kind of a greater impact from that perspective. You've got these renewals you've talked about. Should we be thinking about organic growth being positive next year in ties, or is it How do we think about it, I guess is the question for next year? No 2027 organic growth? Yeah, great. I want to give you a bit of context there, Michael, because there's a few things to say about that topic. We started the year with four Class 1 contract renewals. The teams set a strategy, which was based around three things: pricing discipline, focusing on margin improvement, and obtaining greater volumes. Early in the year, we had some difficult decisions to make because we wanted to stay disciplined on pricing, and we did see some volume be at risk for one particular customer. Since then, for this customer, we are recapturing some of the volume, which actually is looking very positive for 2027. We shared last quarter in Q2 that we had renegotiated a contract with increased volumes going into next year. With the remaining contracts, we are really currently looking at securing the base of volume we have, but increasing our volumes with regards to bridge structures and crossings and pre-plated products. We have made capital investments and have obtained long-term commitments from our customers on those products. When I think about our rail product category, I do believe that the organic growth next year could be slightly higher than that low single digit, as you take into account everything I just explained. Yep, that is very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Please go ahead. Yeah. My question was around 2027. Great color for railway ties, but I would be looking for some color around what we could expect from the utilities, especially on the wood pole side in terms of volume for 2027. I know it's mid-single digits year to date, but given what you see or comments made by the utilities around the interest rate being more prudent, I would just be curious to see what you would expect on the wood pole side in terms of volume for next year. Thank you. Thank you, Benoit. We're still thinking of the 5% or the mid-single digit target is still good. You bring up a good point. We had in our prepared remarks, there are some potential headwinds for our customers. We also understand a lot of our customers have done a lot of work in the last 18 months, ensuring availability of capital. A lot of our customers are also in a situation where it's important to do these investments now in order to be ready for future energy demand and future grid resiliency. I think our customers will power through going forward, and I still expect that mid-single digit growth in wood utility poles next year. Okay. Thank you very much again. Thank you, Benoit. Your next question comes from Hamir Patel from CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi. I just wanted to follow up a bit more on that volume question. Eric, if you are getting 5% wood pole volume growth, it sounds like prices have stabilized, maybe prices hold steady. What sort of contribution from the steel year-over-year would you expect in 2027? In 2027, we expect that as it will get ramped up, as we said at the end of Q1, so probably be at 90%-95% of capacity. We always mention to the market that doubling the capacity would double the sales. If we look at sort of that CAD 55 million that we had put out when we originally bought the Locweld, you could kind of do the math and double that capacity. Double those sales based on- Okay Double capacity. Sorry. Okay, great. No, thanks. That's helpful, Silvana. And Éric, just to clarify on the railway ties, you mentioned some of the other business that you've gained there. Would that actually show up in the industrial products segment versus the railway tie segment? I think you mentioned some- Yes. So anything- timber. Yes. The bridge timbers and the crossings show up in the industrial products. The pre-plated ties and switch tie timbers actually show up in the railway tie reporting segment, reporting group. Okay. Based on that, when you think about your actual rail, the categories you have for railway ties, would you And then given that you have a comp of perhaps more, at least year over year, more TSO, would railway tie sales actually decline next year, even if maybe the dollars are holding steady and then the growth is actually on the industrial products category? Yeah. I don't see TSO having that effect on the sales to create flat or even negative. I think we still have a lot of volume gains with customers that take a finished good or black tie, as we commonly call it. So quite optimistic that we'll see some growth in that tie grouping as well. Okay. Just a last question. Silvana, when you think about this CAD 100 million cost improvement program, what sort of incremental CapEx on top of maybe your regular maintenance are you going to be spending to deliver it? Yes. Most of the initiatives put forward will not require any additional CapEx. Part of the poles and network optimization that we already put forward, there's actually some cost avoidance there or some CapEx that will not be needed going forward, given some of the facilities that we're mothballing or closing. Okay, perfect. That's all I had. I'll turn it over. Thanks. Thanks, Hamir. We have no further questions in the queue. Thank you. Well, thank you, Vincent, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Look forward to updating you when we release our fourth quarter results and year-end results in February. Until then, stay safe and have a happy upcoming holiday season. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.