Good morning, welcome to Titanium Transportation Group's Q4 2022 earnings conference call. On today's call, we have Ted Daniel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alex Fu, Chief Financial Officer, and Marilyn Daniel, Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call today may be forward-looking. In that regard, please refer to the risk factors and cautionary provisions outlined in the press release issued by the company yesterday, as well as the filings made by Titanium on SEDAR. Please note that this call is being recorded today, March 14th, 2023. A replay of this call will be made available until midnight on March 28th, 2023. Details of the replay can be found on our website under the Investors section. I would now like to turn the call over to Titanium's President and CEO, Ted Daniel. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us. I'm pleased to report that Titanium delivered an outstanding fourth quarter EBITDA of $14.9 million, and a record-setting year with total full-year EBITDA of $60.7 million, representing nearly double our results from a year ago. We delivered better-than-expected results with record annual revenues up 24% to $496.4 million, and improved efficiency as a result of continued commitment to growth and our purpose-built technology, delivering an EBITDA margin of 14.2%. Our strong performance for the quarter and the year ended December 31st reflects our ability to execute on our growth strategy. This strategy was set in motion years ago with a commitment to scale our trucking and logistics business in Canada, as well as expanding into U.S. markets while continuing to execute on strategic acquisitions. Our management team being able to more than double the size of this company in just three years. Looking at our trucking segment, we delivered revenue of CAD 214 million, up CAD 43 million or 25% year-over-year. This considers organic and acquisition growth following the completion of ITS and BSC, with the latter contributing an incremental CAD 6.4 million to revenue. Our results also demonstrate the benefits of the investments we've made in our technology and our team as we continue to leverage our newest best-in-class customer and supplier digital solutions. Our newly developed supplier solution tools and vetting systems allowed us to add thousands of partner carriers to our logistics database and service network. In addition, our proprietary third-party digital tracking app has had increasing success. Titanium Fusion, our proprietary software solution, along with our team of freight transportation experts, delivered outstanding results notwithstanding ongoing inflationary pressure on margins and supply chain challenges. Overall, our logistics segment delivered CAD 287 million in revenue for the year, an increase of CAD 54.9 million or 23.6%. Canadian Logistics expanded its Windsor office location to include a logistics branch and added a Montreal office locations late in the quarter. The increase in capacity allowed for an increase in segmented revenue for the year. However, looking at the fourth quarter, transactional volume and pricing softened due to lower consumer demand and the inflationary economic environment. This was the main factor behind the decrease in segmented revenue in Q4 versus the same time last year. Titanium's strategic investment in our U.S. logistics segment has helped us significantly grow our market share and revenues. U.S. logistics currently makes up more than 60% of our overall logistics business and contributed more than $174 million to our overall revenue in 2022. We continue to see significant opportunity for our growth in the U.S. marketplace. Last year, we completed the opening of our fifth office location in Atlanta, and more recently, in January of this year, we announced our sixth U.S. location in Fayetteville, Arkansas, as part of our goal of building Titanium's business offerings in the U.S. market. We expect to continue to secure additional U.S. locations, growing our footprint and customer base with the addition of another two locations in 2023. With a disciplined management strategy while leveraging technology for efficiencies and innovation, the company delivered basic and diluted earnings of CAD 0.56 and CAD 0.55 per share, respectively, for the year, a significant increase from basic and diluted EPS of CAD 0.13 and CAD 0.12 per share earned in 2021. As we look forward to 2023, we expect to continue to navigate a challenging industry and economic environment. Our technology-focused platform is empowering us to deliver efficiencies in optimizing pricing, routing, and load volumes in an environment of emerging pricing pressure and softening volume demand. Despite ongoing cost pressures, our modernized fleet averaging a tractor age of just one and a half years, along with the synergies and efficiencies realized through our recent acquisitions and helping to deliver stable margins and profitability. That said, we continue to expect the cumulative rise in interest rates in North America to moderate volumes and incremental pricing adjustments. In fact, we did experience these emerging trends in the latter part of 2022, and they have persisted in the early stages of fiscal 2023. Against this backdrop, we expect to continue to leverage technology to navigate evolving market conditions, and with a strong balance sheet and cash position, we remain prepared for opportunities resulting from this economic situation. As such, we're providing our new 2023 full year revenue guidance range of CAD 500 million-CAD 520 million, an EBITDA margin of 9.5%-11.5%. With that, I'll turn it over to Alex for a more detailed discussion on our financial results for the quarter. Alex? Thanks, Ted. No worries. This quarter, the company had record Q4 EBITDA of $14.9 million. Consolidated revenue for the quarter was $110.8 million. We are especially fond of our full year consolidated revenue of $496.4 million and full year EBITDA of $60.7 million as they are new milestones for the company. Looking deeper at Q4 segmented performance. The logistics segment delivered revenue of $61.1 million in the quarter, down roughly 10% from $68.2 million a year ago. EBITDA for the quarter improved to $6.6 million, up 36.4% from a year ago, with an EBITDA margin of 12.2%, up from 7.6%. Turning to the truck transportation segment. Revenue during the quarter was CAD 51.3 million, up 15.2% over a year ago. Segmented EBITDA was CAD 9.4 million for the quarter compared to CAD 4.8 million a year earlier, as the EBITDA margin improved to 22.6% compared to 12.3% in the same quarter of 2021. The continued improvement in operating margin in the truck transportation segment is consistent with our expectations following the integration of a sizable acquisition as we continue to deliver operating improvements and synergies. As Ted mentioned earlier, we have substantially completed our tractor replacement program, with only a small portion yet to be replaced. As such, our expected CapEx for the upcoming year will be approximately CAD 33 million, allocated primarily towards the replacement of trailers. In spite of our aggressive equipment replacement program, our net debt to equity ratio remains below one. Titanium's balance sheet and solid capital position continues to provide a strong foundation for our operations and allow us to consider potential acquisition opportunities. Given the strength of our capital position and our confidence in the earnings outlook, we maintain our dividend, declaring a dividend of $0.02 per common share. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ted. Thank you, Alex. No problem. Overall, despite the volatility in the market over the past year, Titanium's technology-based systems and experienced team has demonstrated our ability to deliver for our customers and to execute against our financial and strategic objectives for our shareholders. As I said in my opening remarks, we do expect some challenging conditions in the coming months. With that, we temper our 2023 outlook. I'm more confident than ever that we have among the best platforms in the industry to navigate these conditions resulting from our financial strength and clarity of strategic objectives. 2023 marks the company's 21st year and our 8th year in the public markets, in time for a little reflection. In Q2 of 2015, we entered the public market on the TSXV with approximately CAD 100 million in revenue, targeting to be a CAD 500 million dollar in annual revenue company. Today, we've essentially achieved that goal with the team we have built both in the office and on the road, our investments in technology and our customers who have confidence in our services. As such, this team has set its sights on becoming a significantly larger company. Our focus remains in continued expansion of our asset-light logistics operations both in Canada and in the U.S. Lastly, we intend to grow our truck transportation segment with accretive acquisition opportunities. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to open the line for questions. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star followed by two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question will come from David Ocampo at Cormark Securities. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, David. Good morning. I guess I just wanted to touch first here on the guidance. If I take a look at your logistics division, I mean, that's four consecutive quarters where the EBITDA margin is north of 11%. I think I back into the guidance implies a bit of a fall off, probably down to the long-term average. Is there any reason why, you know, things should fall back to that 9% at times, like you do have a better. You know, you're sourcing the subcontractors a little bit better here. I'm just curious what your thought process is on how margins should trend in 2023, particularly for logistics. I'm just gonna start off here by saying, generally speaking, in a looser market where you've got additional excess capacity, you're definitely gonna see a little bit of pressure on margin percentage. Having said that, we are 60% top line an asset-light business. We are, call it, majority a brokerage. It's a flow-through business from that perspective. In a looser market, obviously your spots are costing you less, and therefore, you know, your revenue, even though it's coming down to some degree, it's really a margin-based business, right? I'm gonna let Alex. Adding more, David, adding on to Ted's comment. If you take a look at our historical performance when there is a softer market, the swing, the other way is substantial. It's almost 6%. However, like you said, we have better sourcing of our carriers. We have better systems than we did before. We don't expect that margin to swing as far as it used to, but we do expect there will be the Fusion app will help us, or Fusion point will help us mitigate some of that. We will see some margin softening. That's typical of the market. With our technology, we're doing our best to mitigate that, and we feel that with our guidance, we show that we're not going to be as elastic as before. I guess maybe if you take a look at January, February and even the first half of March performance, have you seen that margin compression already, or is it something that probably occurs in the latter part of 2023? Uh. No. I mean, we see a little bit coming through, same as in 2022 at the end of it. Not a huge significant difference, but again, as Alex mentioned, the margin compression, and Ted mentioned too, it's a bit of a flow-through, right? You get less, you pay less. It kind of transfers through. Got it. Alex, for the revenue guide, does that include the two U.S. offices that you plan to build out, in 2023? It does include the two offices. We are, Again, like Ted mentioned, we do expect the 2023 market or at least part of it to be a little softer than 2022. We are mitigating that softness that we expect with additional capacity. We're going to open up new offices. In addition, our Montreal office and our Windsor office will be fully operational for 2023, so that we are going to mitigate it with volume. A little bit of your offense is your best defense strategy. Yeah. When do you guys plan to have those two offices open? Just have it correctly modeled. Montreal, we're almost done, so probably within the next couple of months, we should see them in their final space and starting to ramp up hiring. Right now they're in temp space, so they're a little constrained. They're really just scraping the surface. Windsor has been ramping up but is not quite where it should be yet. In terms of the U.S. offices, probably Q3. Okay. Q4. Yeah. Sorry, did you mean U.S.? Yeah, I meant the U.S. offices. Yeah. That's clear. Then Ted, just on the M&A environment, I mean, what are you guys seeing out there in terms of multiples and how much dry powder you guys have available? I'm just gonna say that generally speaking, it feels like we're a little bit back to a normalized M&A environment. Multiples, I would say I'm gonna use the word normalized. You know, obviously in late 2021 and early 2022, things were, you know, for lack of a better term, quite frankly, in the stratosphere. But, you know, I guess to quote financial terms, money was free, and a year later, now money's not free anymore. You know, I think that we're kind of back to a normal environment, right? Where you need to get like a real rate of return. I think that that definitely works itself into, you know, the mathematics of, you know, what I was used to traditionally, you know, normalize multiples and that type of an environment. Pipeline's good on that level, so, you know, we're very confident in what we're gonna achieve this year. In terms of our dry powder, so to speak, we I mean, you can see in our balance sheet, and you can see that we have facilities in play. We can easily do another ITS with very little impact to our financial statement. I guess, Ted, probably more of a broader question, but how are you guys balancing acquisitions versus buying back your own stock? 'Cause you guys are trading in the mid 3x EBITDA range, if I take the midpoint of your guidance, and I compare that to what you acquired ITS for, I think it was 4x or 5x after even synergies. Just curious how you're balancing that thought process? We, yeah, we purchased ITS for 5x pre-synergies. I think we got a really good rate of return on them. Having said that, though, it was a lot of work. My team is fired up and ready to go, so we're pretty confident on that level. Having said that, I would say that we've been fairly conservative on the buyback only because we have kept the barn, say, full of dry powder for being able to execute on a transaction. I think to say that from a capital allocation perspective, we're looking at growth as our primary strategy. You know, we seem to keep going back to that offense is your best defense. That's kind of what we're in. We're currently in growth mode. We definitely wanna execute on leveraging our the scalability of our technology and our platforms and all the investments that we've made over the years in our software and, you know, in all of our systems. We feel that acquisitions are gonna be an excellent place to allocate capital. Okay. Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. No problem. Your next question comes from Benoit Poirier at Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, congratulations for the quarter, especially in the current market environment. Thank you, Benoit. Yeah, just to come back on the previous question, could you provide some color about where do you see the greatest level of M&A opportunities? Is it more in Canada or is US really where you focus on these days, Ted? In terms of, I guess Canada versus the U.S., I think that because our economies are so tied in, I'm actually not really seeing a huge difference. Our pipeline is in pretty good shape, Benoit, on getting leads on a regular basis. I think they're both pretty active regardless of whether it's call it north of the border or south of the border. Right now, obviously, you know, we're pretty excited to be able to look at either. You know, we have the ability to execute on either a Canadian or a US acquisition. You know, we're pretty open to either. Okay. Could you remind us your comfort level when it comes to leverage in terms of net debt to EBITDA, whether it's 2.5-3, or if you could remind us your comfort level, that would be great. Our net debt to EBITDA target would be around three. We're comfortable with that number, and we usually measure it by our net debt to to equity. That's where we're comfortable all the way to three and a half on that. That's also why we mentioned earlier that, you know, we have a lot of dry powder. We're ready to execute on a pretty substantial acquisition, and we're looking. We're looking. Like Ted said, we're looking in Canada, we're looking in the States. We're open to both sides because we now have the capacity and the platform to do so. Yeah. Okay. That's great question. Just to come back on your previous comment about the EBITDA margin for logistics for 2023, is kind of 8%, 9% kind of a good spot to expect? Yes. Sorry, Benoit. The 8% is where we're targeting. I mean, typically, we would mention before 8%-9% is our long-term target. With the 2023 market, or at least when it's a softer market, it will be around the 8%, and that's where we're targeting internally. Okay, perfect. How should we be looking at the margins for truck transportation? Obviously, you finished 2022 with almost a little bit more than 19%, which has been a record performance. I'm just curious on truck transportation where margins could be at for 2023. We do expect the margins to come down a little bit, only because we do expect there will be some retraction on the part that is not contract, which most substantially contracted rates in trucking. We are expecting the drop to be near the 18%-19% margin on truck. We probably won't see the record 22% that we saw in the last two quarters. We are going to be healthy. It is going to be profitable, but we have to be expecting normalized margins. Okay, perfect. Okay, thank you very much. thanks for the time. Thank you, Benoit. Thank you. Your next question comes from Gianluca Tucci at Haywood Securities. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, guys, and congrats on an exceptionally strong Q4. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just curious in terms of the broader picture here in the marketplace and all these macro headwinds that are persisting, Like, you know, like if you could dive a bit deeper into the pricing and the volume pressures that are expected for 2023 that are obviously embedded in your guidance range? It's kind of a big question. I mean, no different than anybody else's outlook. We expect 2023 to be somewhat challenging. I think what we're kind of sticking with is that, while we see cost inflationary pressures, et cetera, and cost of operating a little bit up from where we've been, we are working closely with our customer base. We do have. Good relationship with our customers, especially the contract rate customers, where we're working through our serviceability and our ability to stay close to contract rates that we currently have in place. Most of our customers understand the market that we're in and understand that our costs are increasing as theirs are, and we kind of work through that together. When I look to 2023, I don't see a year of growing pricing. I see it rather stable where we're at. Okay, great. In terms of the expected seasonality for 2023, how do you think that shapes up in the context of your organic growth plans and obviously the market headwinds out there? Seasonality is a interesting question because when you have, you know, years that are kind of what I would say upside down and have, you know, extenuating macros, you get, you know, seasonality in terms of the quarters that isn't normal. You know, what's interesting for what I'm predicting for 2023 is normal seasonality. Okay. Typically in our industry, Q1 tends to be the weakest. That's what I normally see in regular kind of economic circumstances in terms of even just, you know, consumer patterns and things like that. Q1 tends to be the weakest. Q2 tends to be quite good. Q3 sometimes can be a little bit softer but not terrible given that there's, you know, kind of a summer component to it. Then Q4 usually kind of ramps up again. That's kind of what I think is gonna happen this year, you know. I do expect the second half of 2023 to be the, you know, the busier part of 2023, in certain segments of the industry. That's where, you know, I'm predicting to see sort of where the growth will, you know, will kinda ramp up. That's great color, Ted. Appreciate it. Thank you. Just finally on M&A front, I take it that you guys are quite active. Could you add some color, Ted, on an ideal purchase, like is there a desired geography or segment of the market that you really like and are attracted to right now? Acquisitions for us have been, I would say, you know, generally speaking, a good fit. I know, you know, that in the, in the past, I mean, we've always purchased asset-based only because, you know, we do like the, you know, sort of the foundational aspect of asset-based acquisitions. You know, obviously we prefer something a little bit larger, not, you know, too small, but on the other hand, you know, I mean, we're open to, you know, considering any opportunity that makes sense. I think we can also expand that a little bit in terms of what we're looking at. I mean, we are interested in the U.S. marketplace. Of course, we've been expanding on our asset-light model throughout the U.S. We are not opposed to having an asset-heavy or an asset-based company in the U.S. and definitely exploring those opportunities. I think in Canada, it's fair to say that our expansion may include some tuck-ins or some smaller deals, and in the U.S., we kind of target the larger deals. Okay. Perfect, guys. Appreciate the color, and again, congrats on a strong Q4. Thank you. Thanks, Gianluca. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one at this time. Your next question will come from Ben Jecic at PI Financial. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Good morning, Ben. All the good questions have been asked. You have to press star two faster. That's right. I guess one question is, if maybe Marilyn, I can ask to elaborate. Just on your contract rate customers, if you can remind me, how does it work? If you're facing extra inflationary pressures, do you have the flexibility to kinda restructure your deal or do you kinda manage those costs internally with efficiencies or? It's a bit of both. What's the flexibility you have? It's a bit of both. Obviously, we are always looking for improvements, and that's where our technology has helped us throughout the year and continue to do so. That is an expectation of our customers, is that we do look internally to manage tougher times. However, with long-term customers that we have relationships with, most people understand when there are extreme inflationary pressures. We certainly saw that last year with cost of operating, changing very dramatically. Although contract rates are meant to be locked in for a period of time, very often we can work with our customers and have some flexibility when absolutely necessary. We definitely look internally first. Okay. Okay, great. Then, I think one of the remaining questions, which I think Alex has mentioned, but just remind me on CapEx and the average age of your fleet, I think you mentioned is one and a half years. Like, are you, are you still buying new units or where is that project at right now? We've substantially replaced the fleet that we would like to. We've basically completed our truck replacement program. We have, in our MD&A, we mentioned there's about 40-More trucks that we're buying as replacement and the other 40 will be for growth. One of the reasons why we have kinda moved up our truck replacement program is that there was a strong used truck market in 2022, especially the early part of 2022. It's still elevated, but it's not the same levels as it was earlier. We've decided to take advantage of the arbitrage. We moved up our program and replaced it earlier. You can see the substantial gains on the equipment from 2022's financial statements. Now that we're basically we've moved up the program, we're now at the tail end of the replacement program. That's why we're estimating about CAD 33 million, and most of it will be for trailers, which is still seeing a little bit of a squeeze on the supply side. We're looking for more trailers. How long. After the program is completed, then are you gonna kinda sit still for two years or so and then start again, or how does that work? Hopefully we'll be able to start moderating it a little bit more on an even keel only because what happened with COVID was there was kind of a one and a half year delay, 1-1.5 year delay in terms of replacements. On top of that, we also had to replace rather urgently some of the units that came with the ITS acquisition because they were not under warranty. We had some issues there that we needed to deal with. All that's been done and completed. Yeah, agreed, it was a little bit of front-loading. What we'll do over time is, you know, when it makes sense, we'll do the math and, you know, we'll smooth it out, basically. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Makes sense. Thank you very much, and congrats again. Thanks, Ben. Your next question comes from Alexandra Ricci at Paradigm Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, guys, and congratulations on a milestone year. Thanks, Alex. Get back to guidance. In terms of your revenue guidance, are you still kind of expecting that 60/40 mix between logistics and trucking? I know you're kind of looking to add two more offices. Does that kind of shift the mix a little bit if you're not acquiring a new business immediately? We do like that 60/40 split. We like to keep in that range. We may even see brokerage grow larger than that. Even with an asset-based acquisition, we're gonna continue to pursue our brokerage asset light model growth. Okay. Thank you. Just going, kind of back to the logistics model. I know the long-term target was to get to about 10 offices. Is that still kind of the long-term target? I believe that was by 2024. Is that still the long-term target? Yep. Yeah. Yep. We're at six, and if we add two more this year, that'll take us to eight, hopefully by end of 2023. We'd like to add tw more in 2024. At least two more by 2024. least two more by 2024. Awesome. Okay, thanks, guys. That's sort of the plan. Thanks, guys. Your next question comes from Benoit Poirier at Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Just to come back on the logistics segment. I know your mix between spot and contract is typically half and half, and it fluctuates, but have we seen an increase in Q4, or what should we expect in terms of mix, especially for logistics between spot and contractual rates as we move forward? It's been about the same. Yeah. I can't say there was anything. There's no significant shift from contract to spot or vice versa. For us, it's volume growth that we kinda offset. While we might see some contraction from current existing customers just on volume, we are expanding our new customer bases, especially in the U.S. I'm not seeing a huge variance between that 50/50 contract versus spot rates. Our contract rates and logistics have been rather stable. Okay. given the softer market condition, is it more easy to find people? I know it's been a challenge to open up some U.S. location, but, is it more easy to ramp up the U.S. location given the softer market condition and bigger availability of people, maybe? It's starting to be for sure. We're seeing some ease there. Largely when we open our U.S. offices, we sort of seed our new terminal managers in our existing offices. We are still always working with that. Once we launch those offices, we staff in that state or that city. Yes, I would say that there are more applicants out there now when we're posting positions than we have seen in the past. Yes, it's starting to come back a little bit to, I guess, a more normal labor market. Okay. From a turnover standpoint, have we seen a slowdown, given the market environment these days? I'm sorry, are you talking about staff or what? Oh, in terms of driver, have we seen a slowdown in terms of turnover, with respect to the. Remember, our turnover has always been low. We sort of always in a good place. I think no different. I think our turnover has been rather stable. Perhaps most recently, a little bit more stable, but nothing significant yet. I do anticipate into the rest of this year that you would probably see lower turnover rates, I think, across the board. Like even lower, in other words. Yes, even lower turnover rates across the board. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Okay, that's great color. Thanks again. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Benoit. At this time, there are no further questions, I will turn the conference back to Ted Daniel for any closing remarks. Thank you, operator, for facilitating the call. Regardless of the economic conditions we operate in, undoubtedly, with our innovative, hardworking team of people, Titanium will continue to grow, succeed, and increase shareholder value. We highly appreciate your interest in Titanium. If there are any further questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you, everyone, for joining this morning's call. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for this morning. We would again like to thank you for participating and ask you to please disconnect your lines.