Good morning, and welcome to Titanium Transportation Group Q2 2024 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, Tuesday, August 13, 2024. A replay of this call will be made available until midnight on August 27, 2024. The details of the replay can be found on Titanium's 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. The Q2 of 2024 saw persistent industry-wide pricing pressures, particularly in the full truckload segment. Muted economic activity over capacity, inflationary input costs, geopolitical and market uncertainties continued to impact freight demand and industry-wide volume. Despite these challenges, we prioritize our strategic plan and are focused on optimizing and working with the constraints of the current marketplace through our technology-driven navigation systems. This approach translated into solid results. Titanium generated CAD 115 million in revenue, a 14.7% increase over Q2 of 2023, and CAD 10.2 million in consolidated EBITDA from continuing operations. It is important to note that Titanium's ability to generate consistent results despite challenging market conditions, is a testament to our diversified business model and our team's operational strength. Now, turning to our segmented results. Our trucking business continued to drive growth. We delivered revenue from continuing operations of CAD 59.5 million in Q2 2024, a 20.7% increase year-over-year. EBITDA margin came in at 15.5%, a decline from Q2 of 2023. This short-term decline in profitability can be attributed to two key factors. First, the segment continued to absorb the majority of integration costs from the acquisition in Oakwood, Georgia, during an environment of economic headwinds. While we're leveraging advanced in-house analysis to identify and harness synergies in areas such as asset tracking, safety, routing, and asset utilization, some of these solutions have been slow to impact profitability. Secondly, the truckload freight environment continued to exert downward pricing pressures into the H1 of 2024. In particular, the full truckload segment faced significant headwinds due to reduced end market demands, leading to a 6% decrease in pricing year-over-year in the truck transportation segment, despite our efforts to shift capacity towards sustainable rates. Truck transportation saw an increase in volume of 24%, primarily attributable to our Oakwood, Georgia, acquisition. We're encouraged by these developments and are confident that increasing targeted volume will exponentially drive profitability once market conditions improve. Aligned with our previous commentary, Titanium's commitment to scale our business in the U.S. market will be the major driver for our next stage of growth. As of January 1, 2024, we started to see the benefits of our acquisition of Crane Transport as their operations were migrated onto the Titanium technology and financial platforms. This directly contributed to significant growth within our truck transportation segment. As discussed, we've been experiencing temporary adverse effects on margins during this period of integration. That continued into the Q2 of 2024. Looking ahead, we expect Titanium American Trucking to be a core asset in our business and enable customers to access a comprehensive freight management offering, driving growth in Titanium's U.S.-based logistics business. In addition to capitalizing on the benefits of our Georgia acquisition, we focused our efforts towards delivering sustainable long-term shareholder growth within this challenging environment. Hence, turning to the logistics segment, we generated revenue of CAD 56.2 million, up 6.6% compared to Q2 of 2023, with EBITDA coming in at CAD 3.1 million in Q2 of 2024. EBITDA margins for logistics during the quarter were 6.2% in Q2 2024, compared to 8.7% in Q2 2023, a 250 basis point decrease. I would like to highlight that even with persistent pricing pressures during the H1 of this year, continued sales efforts ensured that both our operating segments recorded volume growth year-over-year. Logistics volumes improved by 22% year-over-year. However, soft consumer sentiment weighed on transactional pricing, offsetting the revenue growth for the segment to approximately 7%....We're pleased with the strong growth of our logistics segment, and we remain committed to grow this asset-light segment regardless of market conditions, particularly in the U.S. freight brokerage market. In alignment with our strategic goals, we divested redundant assets in the H1 of the year and continued to evaluate our business units, which resulted in reduced operations for specific geographic areas, reducing our asset offerings in these areas. This decision was driven by a thorough assessment of current profitability and future growth prospects. Through the reduction of underperforming assets, we are better positioned to focus on more promising opportunities and markets. More specifically, we continue to actively explore opportunities to monetize non-core assets, which will contribute to an accelerated reduction in our long-term debt. In terms of cost control initiatives, we were able to find efficiencies by centralizing certain operational functions. Our use of technology allows us to continue to pursue additional opportunities for efficiencies as we deploy technological investments in artificial intelligence in our processes. We believe that AI will have a significant impact on the industry. With a refreshed fleet and reduced need for capital expenditures, we expect to generate substantial free cash flow over the next 18 to 24 months. Additionally, we're focused on monetizing underperforming equipment, which will help us further reduce debt. Our priority remains on meeting the growing needs of our customers, scaling for future growth, and generating long-term value for our shareholders. We're taking this opportunity to revise our 2024 full year revenue guidance range of CAD 440 million-CAD 460 million, and EBITDA margins of 8%-10%. With that, I'll turn it over to Alex for a more detailed discussion of our financial results for Q2 2024. Alex? Thanks, Ted. In the Q2 of 2024, on a consolidated basis, Titanium generated revenue of CAD 115.1 million, compared to CAD 100.4 million in Q2 of 2023, a 14.7% increase. We delivered EBITDA of CAD 10.2 million, with EBITDA margin of 10.1%. Diving deeper into segment performances, the truck transportation segment saw revenue of CAD 59.5 million, an increase of 20.7% over Q2 of 2023, and EBITDA of CAD 7.9 million, with an EBITDA margin of 15.5%. As Ted mentioned, it's important to note that these results are despite this segment having absorbed a significant portion of continued integration costs resulting from our U.S.-based acquisition. We expect this to last for the next couple of quarters. The logistics segment generated revenue of CAD 56.2 million, an increase of 6.6% compared to CAD 52.7 million in the comparative period. EBITDA was CAD 3.1 million, compared to CAD 4.1 million in Q2 2023, with an EBITDA margin of 6.2%. As part of our ongoing capital strategy, we continue to take meaningful steps to identify redundant assets in our portfolio and proceed to divest of these assets. For instance, during Q1, we sold approximately 21 acres of unused land in Cornwall. The proceeds from these asset sales, along with the free cash flow generated from our operations, will be directed towards reducing debt. This disciplined approach to capital allocation underscores our commitment to strengthening our balance sheet and enhancing our capital position. By prioritizing debt reduction, we are ensuring that we have the capacity to invest in future inorganic growth opportunities and steer through current economic uncertainties. Given the strength of our business and our confidence in the earnings outlook, we maintain our dividend, declaring a dividend of CAD 0.02 per common share. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ted. Thank you, Alex. With the backdrop of this prolonged freight recession, we are reasonably satisfied with the performance in the H1 of 2024. While we are beginning to see signs that market conditions are moderating, it is difficult to predict when end market conditions will improve. Navigating this environment has been challenging, but we are committed towards executing our growth plan and focusing on factors within our control. Our continued investments in people and technology have laid a strong foundation for success. By complementing these investments with strategic asset divestitures and fleet optimizations, we're well positioned to navigate the road ahead with confidence and deliver long-term sustainable growth for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to open the line for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press the star key, then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press the star key, then two. One moment, please, for your first question. The first question comes from Yuri Zoreda with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Morning, Yuri. Morning, Yuri. ... Could you provide additional color on the puts and takes behind the 2024 outlook provision? What is included in the guidance for the H2 of the year in terms of capacity leaving the market? Capacity leaving the market is definitely a factor we'll cover in a second. The earnings outlook that we have basically outlines that we are relatively stable in terms of volume with modest volume growth. But there is still transactional pricing pressure, so that's why there's a slight decrease from the last guidance. Profitability does have a toll because of the market condition, and that's what's kind of built into the guidance. And I would let Ted handle the first part of the question, which is the capacity leaving the market. Yeah. So again, we, so Yuri, we expected that capacity would have left, more capacity would have left the market at this point in time. We, you know, looking at the charts, the numbers, the industry, and, you know, industry, all the different indexes and so on, if you look at that, we're just not seeing capacity leave the industry as quickly as we anticipated. Normal cycles would have had a better Q2. And I think that, you know, if you're looking at Q1 and Q2 of 2024, it wasn't the capacity that I think, when we were talking about 2024 and 2023, we expected Q2 2024 to be better. And the capacity didn't tighten the way we expected it to. So obviously now that's something that we're taking into account, and we're adjusting for that. So that's why we believe that the H2 of the year is going to be necessary for, you know, for that type of an adjustment. You wanna- Okay. Add to that? Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Yeah, no, thank you. That's helpful. And a good segue, I wanted to know if any of that was related to what you're seeing for the Crane integration. In the MD&A, you mentioned it is progressing at a slower rate than originally expected. I think you originally completion was expected in Q2, perhaps Q3. So could you just update us on the status of the integration and timeline? Sure. So the timeline is, as we outlined in the MD&A, a little slower than expected, and that's, portion of it is because we are working through some of the soft integration that we spoke of in previous quarters, where there are synergies that needs to be realized, and because of the market condition, it's slower to realize. And but we're still on track, we're still progressing, and Marilyn would have better- Yeah Color on that. So from a physical integration pace, we have recently just successfully finished all of our integrations, back office, front office, equipment, et cetera. So we are now fully on the systems from that perspective. Now, the optimization phase of the work is really starting and getting deeper into some of the customer base and some of the pressures that are in the marketplace in the US market. So to Alex's point, it took a little bit slower to kind of, I guess, find the successes in the integration, largely because the market was soft and softening as we were progressing through it. So, we're fairly confident now that we've got our navigation tools in place, and we're working on the culture and performance of the company overall, that we're headed in the right direction with certainty. I think that, you know, what's actually exciting about it is that that's a very strategic purchase. It opens up a huge market for us. And so one of the challenges that we ran into was you're integrating at the same time that literally the last year, we're talking four quarters. I mean, we bought this thing, we closed August first. So that was kind of the middle of Q3 of last year, and we're kind of... We just hit that one-year anniversary. So during that time, as we're integrating, the pricing environment in the U.S. is imploding. And so I think that that made it a very interesting, a very interesting, call it project. Having said that, what's really exciting is that we are now done, and this is opening up a lot of opportunities for expansion, particularly on the holistic freight offering that we have, which will now leverage our logistics division for a more broader customer offering. Okay. Thank you. That was helpful. I'll turn it over. Thanks, Yuri. Thank you. The next question comes from David Ocampo with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Morning, David. Morning, David. I wanted to circle back here just on Yuri's questions as it relates to, you know, potential failures. I'm curious if you guys are starting to see more of these appear in terms of acquisition opportunities or maybe even when it comes to bidding on volumes. Yeah, we're definitely seeing shrinkage, again. So David, I do look at the indices. We are seeing every month there is, you know, net negative authorities, so there is shrinkage. In addition, we are seeing some green shoots, which is kind of interesting. We obviously Q2 wasn't the Q2 that we would have expected, traditionally in a normal seasonal cycle. But having said that, there's definitely some green shoots in terms of opportunities. We're starting to see some sensitivity in the market, which is kind of interesting as well. So from that perspective, green shoots, we're seeing customers actually get a little bit more nervous about, you know, the capacity, which is good. They're realizing that, you know what, this abundant capacity that's out there is probably going to balance, and we're hoping that it's going to happen in the near term. You know, there's an old saying, right, what's the solution to low prices? Lower prices. So I think that that's going to continue to beat up the profitability of the truckload industry in particular, and that's going to keep causing capacity to shrink. So from that perspective, that is definitely call it, you know, economics doing what it's supposed to do. Gotcha. And I guess when it comes to your own rationalization, you know, exiting markets that may not be getting the returns that you guys are looking for, are you guys in the first inning, middle innings, or even in the back half of the game here? In terms of- The back. Are we talking divestitures? Yeah, your own personal divestitures or exiting markets that you don't think is attractive anymore. I definitely think we're in the third, like, inning 7, 8, 9 here, but having said that, yeah. We're not done. I mean, we're continuing to evaluate where we should be allocating our capital, and we're making those decisions, and we believe that we're going to make the right, you know, the right decisions, both in the short term and then and for the long term of the industry, the long term of the company, relative to the industry and relative to where our strengths lie, and where we're able to generate the best rate of return for our shareholders. So in terms of making those decisions, yeah, we're definitely looking at our capital allocation strategy at this point in time. I would just say that, when we're looking at those existing marketplaces, or product lines that we're into now is a choice in the moment. We do have the ability to pivot very quickly that way. So I don't want to make it sound as though anything is a forever choice in terms of what we're looking at. And in terms of redundancy in the moment, we are able to identify and execute on whatever decisions or adjustments need to be made to address those available redundancies that we come across. It's just a matter of timing. Okay, that, that makes sense. Then when I look at your deck, you guys still have 20-25 logistics offices in the US as your target. Maybe you could walk us through some updated timelines around that and maybe even the potential revenue and EBITDA contributions, just given what we're seeing in the market today. Yeah. So actually, we are, as you well know, we are 50% of our top line, roughly 50% of the top line is a brokerage, and that is an area that we're very good at. In fact, we have a significant amount of technological strengths as well as a broker. We are continuing to grow that product line. Brokerage grew both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year in terms of volume. Our sales departments are doing a fantastic job. Offense is your best defense in this case. So having said that, we're going to continue to grow. We actually should have, at this point in time, announced our next office, but we did run into a little bit of a delay with a landlord that we were working with. They ran into some issues, and that sort of caused a little bit of a delay in terms of the process. We've got two management teams, in fact, ready to go for two more offices. So we're already working on that. So the growth will continue, in particular in our brokerage. Okay. That's, that's all the questions I had. I'll turn the line over. Okay, no problem. Thanks, David. Thanks. The next question comes from Gianl uca Tucci with Haywood Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, guys. Good morning, Gianl uca. If I could just ask, firstly, on your volumes. Nice growth on the volume side of things. I'm just wondering if, Ted, can you unpack that a bit for us? Is that growth mainly onboarding new customers or expanding existing relationships? It's primarily new, but it is both. So our existing relationships, which we're mostly a CPG company, we're not really luxury items. So our existing relationships continue. There is some slight growth there, but obviously, our existing customers are currently also in maintenance mode for the most part. But what we are seeing for the most part is a lot of new business as well. So that... Great question, by the way. I really appreciate it because there is a lot of excitement, as you can tell. A lot of our growth is from new customers, which this is all grassroots. I mean, this is the stuff that's going to give us that next stage of growth. As soon as things even slightly tighten, we're gonna see the benefit of our systems kick in and be able to leverage that exponential growth. So that's why we believe that, you know, a lot of these new customers that are on board are going to benefit from Titanium. And it's also indirectly an indicator that they're not happy with their existing supply base. So that's why, you know, we are excited about the fact that the majority of that is new. And a little bit as well of opportunities that we leverage from the new Crane relationships, right? So you've got sort of several, you know, very positive ingredients that are intrinsic in this equation. You know, especially the new business, our new relationships through the Oakwood acquisitions, for technology, efficiency, you know, AI that we're currently looking at, and all of that is going to provide for a very high ROIC run rate of returns, as soon as things tighten. That's great color, Ted. Thanks. And just on your end markets, I mean, like you touched on this, but can you speak to any changes from the demand side of things that you're seeing in your end markets? And if any segments are worth calling out from a better or, like, worse performance perspective than, like, you'd anticipate for this type of economy today? Our end markets are primarily consumables, so a lot of CPG or ingredients or sub-assembly components that are in the consumable space. I'd say we're fairly steady from that perspective, including the fact that we are still seeing as well steadiness in construction for our flatbed division. So that's kind of a good area or a good indicator as well. I also think it's important to note, again, sort of the breadth of our business. You know, our lack of dependency on any particular market has certainly helped us kind of balance through. In terms of any sectors that are, that are, you know, that are really booming, I don't think there is one right now. But- Yeah. You know, we kind of spread through anything from consumable food products, construction materials, and so on. I think it's pretty balanced. And again, our largest customers don't represent more than 6% of our business. So, I think that's been a stronghold for us and allowing us to build on volumes. As you noted earlier, that's a really important factor in our future success, is our volume growth. And that's the part that although these results aren't obviously as stellar as we would like, but, the volume growth is extremely important as we're building our infrastructure and building our business. Absolutely. Thanks for that, Marilyn. Just lastly, from my end, looks like the rails may actually be going on strike later this month. How are you guys positioning if a strike does happen, to monetize on some of that volume? We have very scalable models. Yeah. Our technology, actually, and our brokerage in particular, will allow us to leverage that. We have databases that can act very, very quickly on an automated basis and provide the automation in order to be able to significantly scale those type of volumes. I mean, there's no way that the trucking industry has the capacity to all of a sudden carry the volume of freight that needs to go on rail. It's gonna cause a significant disruption if that happens. And obviously, what's gonna happen is gonna be this huge amount of temporary demand for probably cross-country, so Canadian domestic space. But the two... I mean, they're not gonna add up. It's gonna cause a really massive call it spike, on a very temporary basis. But we can handle that because we've got, again, the technology to be able to navigate through that and figure out exactly how to benefit from that. So from our point of view, I mean, it'll be a big benefit. We'll work with our customers. Yeah, we'll, we'll work through it as well. Yeah. That's great color, guys. Thank you. Talk to you soon. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Again, if you have a question, please press the star key, then one. The next question is from Benoit Poirier with Desjardins. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Morning, Benoit. Morning, Benoit. Yeah. Yeah, just to come back on the previous question, with respect to the potential rail strike, once we combine that with the Canadian competitor, Pride, that is now officially set to wind down, have you seen any type of influx of inbound calls from potential customers wanting to switch, or it's still to be seen? I think it's a little early for us to evaluate the effects of Pride and the wind down and whatnot. I can add to that a little bit. You know, did Pride as an operations have an effect in the marketplace? It certainly did. It was of size and significant, and predatory pricing was definitely a piece of it. The fallout remains to be seen, the effects remain to be seen, but I do think there will definitely be an effect that- ... potentially would be beneficial for those remaining in the space. We don't think there won't be an effect. We believe there will be an impact, but we're just trying to figure out at this point in time exactly what the impact of that will be. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of discussions that are currently happening as a result of that. Okay. Okay, that's great. And when we look at volumes, trends in Q3, it looks like the Loadlink reports for July saw a significant jump in year-over-year load volumes for the Canadian trucking market. So, any thoughts whether you are seeing the same? Yeah. So what's interesting is that usually July is worse than June. In this case, this year, June and July were more or less the same, which is kind of unusual. Having said that, that's more of a volume thing, but there was so much, and I remember a lot of people using the term slack. There was a lot of slack in the system. So there was unexpectedly slightly better volume in June for June, but there was so much slack in the system that it had very little impact on pricing. So really, until, I mean, again, the, you know, the solution to low prices is low prices. So we need to see more capacity leave the industry. I mean, if you talk to our dispatchers, they'll tell you there's times when... And we don't have a lot of reliance on load boards, but there is a little bit of filler freight out there, just like any trucking company. And you get on load boards, and there's not a lot of, not a lot being posted, and we're still seeing that same behavior. So until we start seeing some of the indicators change, that in and of itself is a matter of supply and demand, right? Okay. Okay, that's great. And just in terms of leverage, could you maybe provide an update on the debt paydown path towards 1.5 times? What are kind of the next step? And you mentioned color about the strategic initiatives, so I'm just curious if you could provide more granularity about the leveraging path. Thank you. Well, there's no change in our strategy. We're still paying about CAD 10-11 million a quarter. And where that's coming from is it's a mixture of our free cash flow from our operations and some of the proceeds from our divestiture, and that's going to continue for the near future. We are very committed to bringing down the leveraging. We believe that... We always believe that a strong balance sheet is what drives our company, and we continue to believe in that strategy, and we'll continue to execute on the strategy. In the short term, we have no change in plans in terms of debt reduction. We're fully committed to doing that. Okay. Thank you very much for that. I just want to say we don't, we don't have any, CapEx, in the works for the next, 18-24 months. I mentioned that in my script, so, so it's all gonna be free cash flow. Okay. That, that's great color. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Steve Hansen with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Oh, hey, guys. Thanks for the time. This is Robert on here for Steve. Just wanted to circle back quickly on the market conditions. You guys have mentioned some signs of stabilization. I was just wondering if maybe you could go into a bit more color as to the factors you guys are kind of monitoring there. Yeah. So if you take a look at the fact that, like, the volumes, all of the indices, things haven't gotten worse. They just haven't gotten better yet. So that's kind of a good thing if you think about it. The volumes are there at this point in time. The spread between contract and spot rates has actually narrowed, which is kind of a good thing because the spot market seems to have stabilized versus the contract rate, I believe, has just come down as a result of the fact that you've got just cheaper RFQs out there at this point in time. If there's some tightening over the next three to six months, then you're gonna see a slight increase in contracts. Otherwise, you know, it's still gonna be rather competitive. Having said that, though, we are seeing some, you know, again, some interesting sensitivity. So that's why we believe that we're into, albeit a trough, but we are into a stable trough. I guess that's kind of good news in the equation. So that's sort of a good thing. A stable trough is better than a continuingly eroding trough at this point in time. So that gives me confidence that I don't think that inflection is all that far away. I don't believe it's years. I mean, it could be, you know, it could be three months from now, it could be six months. I don't think it's a year. That's kind of what my guess would be, given the circumstances. I'm just gonna add just quickly to that. There are some telltale signs on the U.S. brokerage side that we look at that gives us a little bit of positive encouragement as we look forward. Okay, great. Thanks. That's great color. And just last one from me is, with free cash flow ramping, I know you've talked about debt reduction being a priority. Just wondering how else other things fit into the such as future M&A, buybacks, kind of et cetera. I think at this point in time, given the fact that over the next, call it 6-12 months, our goal is to continue to grow the brokerage side of our business. We really don't expect to have a lot of M&A activity. Having said that, I mean, we are looking at unique circumstances that perhaps will really fit in, you know, as I said, under very unique criteria. We're not looking to just acquire for the sake of acquiring at this point in time. We're definitely gonna strategically focus on where we have technological advances and where we're going to grow a kind of a more asset-light model. The majority of that growth is, again, more than likely gonna be in the US. We're in the process of opening up more offices. We do have the management teams ready to go for that. So I don't really see asset-based M&A, something that is a high probability. We believe it's actually gonna be a low probability, and then the high probability growth on the asset-light model. Okay, great. Thank you very much for the time. I'll turn it back over. Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Steve. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Ted for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. Okay, great. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate your interest in our company. I look forward to providing an update on our progress and all of our priorities discussed today when we report our Q3 2024 results in November. If there are any further questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you again for joining us on the call today. The conference is now concluded.