Bonjour. On behalf of the board of directors and management of Colabor Group, I would like to welcome you to Colabor Group's annual meeting of shareholders. My name is Warren White, Chairman of the Board, and I will act as chairman of the meeting. The meeting is being held by webcast to maximize the presence and participation of our shareholders, wherever they may be. As in previous years, all registered shareholders and named proxy holders will have the opportunity to attend the meeting, ask questions, and vote. Non-registered shareholders may attend the meeting as guests. I will be accompanied by Mr. Louis Frenette, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Pierre Blanchette, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Pascal Rodier, our Corporate Secretary, who will act as Secretary of this meeting. Mr. Rodier will assist me in the formal process of this meeting.
All other members of Colabor Group board, of the board and senior management are also present at this meeting. To begin, I'd like to invite Mr. Rodier to explain the proceedings of the meeting. Pascal? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The meeting will be conducted in English and in French during this meeting, depending on the choice of the presenter or those asking questions as the case may be. Please note that a copy of today's presentation is available in English or in French on the Lumi platform in the documents section. Please also note that this meeting is simultaneously translated from English to French or from French to English as appropriate. Simply click on the appropriate button on top of the broadcast screen. All voting on resolutions submitted to the meeting at today's meeting will take place through the online portal only.
From now on, registered shareholders and appointed proxy holders can register their vote on all items of the meeting under the votes tab. You can always toggle between messages, greetings, and votes throughout the meeting by clicking on the appropriate tabs. The voting features will be closed once the last voting item has been considered. You will have a few minutes to register your vote, after which time the results will be tabulated and the preliminary results will be disclosed. As described in the proxy circular, only registered shareholders and non-registered shareholders who have received a control number can vote during the meeting. Please note that you do not need to vote at the meeting if you have already voted by proxy. Finally, I'd like to point out that Ms. Martine Gauthier of Computershare Investor Services Inc. has been designated to act as scrutineer at this meeting.
Today, after establishing quorum, we will proceed to receive the annual financial statements for fiscal 2023, and then vote on resolutions concerning the appointment of the auditor for the next fiscal year and the election of directors. Following the announcement of the voting results, Mr. Frenette, President and CEO of Colabor Group, and Mr. Blanchette, Senior Vice President and CFO, will make a presentation on the company's results, activities, and outlook. This presentation will be followed by a question period in order to take questions and comments from attendees on the topics covered during the meeting. Please note that you can ask your questions as of now, and that you don't have to wait until the end of the meeting to send them. To do so, click on the Messages button, enter the question at the bottom of the screen, then click on Send.
To ensure the smooth process and running of the meeting, we ask that your question or comment be succinct and of interest, general interest to all shareholders. Mr. Chairman, the floor is yours. Thank you, Pascal. Scrutineers have advised me that the quorum required for this meeting has been reached. Consequently, I declare the meeting duly convened and constituted for each of the matters submitted. The first item on the agenda is the receipt of Colabor Group's financial statements for the year ending December 30th, 2023. The group's audited consolidated financial statements and independent auditors' report for the year ended December 30th, 2023, are available on Colabor Group's website or on SEDAR+ . As shareholders have already had the opportunity to consult the financial statements, we will dispense with the reading of them and of the auditors' report.
The next item on the agenda is the appointment of Colabor Group's auditors. Oh, sorry, the company's current auditor is PricewaterhouseCoopers. Following the recommendation of the Audit Committee and the board of directors belonging to Colabor Group, it is recommended that PricewaterhouseCoopers be reappointed as auditor of Colabor Group for the current fiscal year, and that the board of directors of the company be authorized to fix its remuneration. Pascal, can we please move forward with a motion? Yes, with pleasure. I am a shareholder of Colabor Group Inc. I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers be appointed auditors of Colabor Group Inc., and that the board of directors be authorized to fix their remuneration. Thank you, Pascal. We'll now proceed with the second item, requiring a shareholder vote, namely the election of directors. I'd like to proceed with the election of Colabor Group directors.
During the last financial year, fiscal year, the board of directors was composed of seven directors and was looking for an eighth director. Taking into consideration the recruitment criteria mentioned in the circular, it is with great pleasure that the board of directors of Colabor Group proposes a new candidate, Ms. Laurie Gauthier, a dynamic young entrepreneur with a passion for the food industry. We believe that this addition to the board will strengthen the board in many ways. There are therefore eight directors to elect. We have eight proposed candidates. Each of the candidates meets the criteria required by Colabor Group's incorporating documents to hold the position of director.
In addition, under agreements entered into with certain investors, as described in the circular, each of Gestion Robway Limited and The Zucker Trust is entitled to propose a nominee for election as director, holding the minimum number of shares necessary to maintain this right. The eight nominees are Mr. Marc Beauchamp, current and proposed representative of Gestion Robway Limited, Mr. Jean Gattuso, Ms. Danièle Bergeron, Ms. Laurie Gauthier, Mr. Robert Johnston, current and proposed representative of The Zucker Trust, Mr. Denis Mathieu, Mr. François Roy, and myself, Warren White. Pascal, can we please move forward with the motion? Yes, certainly. As a reminder, at its 2015 annual meeting, the company adopted an advance notice bylaw to govern the right of registered shareholders to nominate directors prior to an annual meeting of the company.
No proposals from the nomination of other persons as directors have been submitted to the company or received by the company pursuant to this bylaw. The motion will therefore be as follows: I am a shareholder of Colabor Group Inc., and I move that a resolution be passed for the election of directors of Colabor Group Inc. of each of the following 8 candidates: Mr. Marc Beauchamp, Ms. Danièle Bergeron, Mr. Jean Gattuso, Ms. Laurie Gauthier, Mr. Robert Johnston, Mr. Denis Mathieu, Mr. François Roy, and Mr. Warren White. Thank you, Pascal. Now that the issues to be voted on by shareholders have been presented and moved, I would like to ask you to complete your vote for each of the resolutions that have been submitted. We'll leave, the voting feature available and open for another 30 seconds. I now declare the vote closed.
The scrutineer report will be ready immediately after the meeting. Based on the preliminary results confirmed by the scrutineers, the resolution having each received a majority affirmative vote, I confirm that the resolution to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditors of Colabor Group Inc. for the fiscal year, to authorize the board of directors and to fix its remuneration, is adopted. The resolution for the election of each of the proposed directors is adopted, and I confirm that Mr. Marc Beauchamp, Ms. Danièle Bergeron, Mr. Jean Gattuso, Ms. Laurie Gauthier, Mr. Robert Johnston, Mr. Denis Mathieu, Monsieur François Roy, and Mr. Warren White, have each been duly elected as a director of Colabor Group for the ensuing year. We will now proceed with the presentation of Mr. Louis Frenette, CEO, and Mr. Pierre Blanchette, CFO. Gentlemen, Louis and Pierre, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Warren, and hello to all. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. With me today, as Warren mentioned, is Pierre Blanchette, our CFO.
Hello, my name is Louis Frenette. I'm with Pierre Blanchette, our head of finance. The next presentation will be narrated in French.
Version of the presentation is available on the Lumi platform and on our website, website in the investors section. Please be advised that we will take questions in both English and French at the end of this presentation, should we have any. We will now continue in French.
... The following presentation will be given entirely in French. For those who wish, an English copy of the presentation is available on the Lumi platform and on our website in the Investors section. Please note that you may ask questions in either English or French following the presentation during the dedicated question period. Let's move to the next slide, please. Today, we'll be talking about the results of the second phase of our transformation plan and future priorities. We'll also discuss financial results for 2023 and the first quarter, which were published on May 2nd, a Thursday, in 2024, after the market was closed. Next slide, please. This slide here contains usual language with regards to forward-looking statements, and I invite you to consult it. Next slide, please. Slide 11.
We are proud of the convincing results delivered in fiscal 2023, a year in which we embarked upon our second phase of our transformation. Growth in revenues and profitability generated in 2023 allowed us to maintain a strong balance sheet despite significant investments in future growth. Pierre will discuss our annual financial results for 2023 when, we present the first quarter of 2024 in further detail. Next slide, please. These excellent results are the fruit of our initiatives to generate profitable growth since 2020. We have significantly enhanced our product offering and further diversified our customer base. On the product end of things, we have continued to optimize the number of products on offer, focusing on quality and local products. Our private labels offer a majority of products sourced locally in Canada and in Quebec, which is an important differentiating factor.
Our range of specialty products is always at the highest quality. Lauzon is the leading meat distributor and beef specialist in Quebec. Norref is the largest distributor of seafood products, many of which are certified for responsible local fishing. We're proud to supply Quebec's top restaurants with meat and seafood products. On the client customer side of things, we continue to focus on diversifying our customer base within the HRI industry. HRI is hotels, restaurants, and institutions. In the current micro, macroeconomic context, given food service segmentation, given that it's slowing down to reduce customer spending, this diversification gives us significant resilience. Direct sales to restaurants accounted for 38% of our sales figures in 2023.
Sales to institutions, hosts, hotels, retail outlets, and other channels accounted for 36% of our sales, while sales to other distributors through our wholesale business accounted for 26% of sales. Our growing reach also means that we are increasingly attractive to restaurant chains operating province-wide. In 2023, we began serving two major new customers following agreements signed at the end of 2022. With the startup of our new hybrid distribution center in Western Quebec at the end of the year, we are now in an excellent position to gain market share in this niche. On the next slide, please. After two acquisitions in April 2022, we proved accretive, and we took a break from our acquisition activities in 2023 to focus our efforts on ensuring the on-time and on-budget move to our distribution site in Saint-Bruno.
It was only for the first quarter of 2024 that our activities, our acquisition activities resumed with the completion of the purchase of assets from a distributor in Eastern Quebec. These activities have been integrated into our Lévis site near Quebec City and have already generated a number of operational synergies. Next slide, please. In this section, we discuss the second phase of our growth, of which the new hybrid distribution centers is the centerpiece. On slide 15, our five-year strategic plan is based on the following four pillars. We are now more than halfway through this plan, and our priorities for the future are as follows: First of all, to generate profitable growth by continuing to improve our category and product mix management practices, working on our customer mix, optimizing our processes, logistics, purchasing activities, and our revenue growth management strategy.
Secondly, to increase our share of the province's distribution market by building on our strong presence in eastern Quebec and gradually launching our distribution activities in western Quebec from the new Saint-Bruno site. We are also counting on an acquisition strategy to accelerate this objective. The third pillar is to attract, retain, and develop our human resources.... We have implemented a new human resources plan and a new approach to health and safety and the environment. We now have a committed and motivated workforce, supported by a new employee value proposition. And our fourth priority is to continue renewing and refreshing the Colabor brand, by focusing more on local sourcing and continuously improving the position of our offer. We estimate that the Quebec distribution market is worth approximately CAD 4.5 billion, on slide 16.
On the left-hand side of the slide, you can see that in 2023, our broad line distribution activities were mainly in eastern Quebec, where we are a major distributor, targeting independent restaurants. Since the opening of our new distribution center in Saint-Bruno at the end of 2023, since that, we've been able to serve almost 90% of the HRI distribution market. On Slide 17, you see that the move to the new distribution center took place at the end of the year, on schedule and even slightly under budget. We're extremely proud, proud of this achievement, and grateful to all of our employees who contributed to this collective effort. We now have a new head office and a custom-built hybrid center, enabling us to carry out our wholesale activities and our new distribution activities aimed at customers in western Quebec.
The move was also very beneficial for our employees, offering them a much more stimulating and accessible working environment. The project required investments totaling CAD 18 million, all of which were committed in 2023. These investments were partly financed internally by our cash flows and by recourse to our credit facilities. As of last year's meeting, we forecasted that our debt-to-equity ratio would increase slightly over the next few quarters, but that the increase in Adjusted EBITDA and cash flow would allow us to reduce it relatively quickly, and that was indeed the case. About 10 days ago, we migrated our existing western customers, whom we previously served from our eastern facilities, to the Saint-Bruno site. This has gone very well and has freed up capacity for growth in eastern Quebec.
These facilities will be LEED certified and net zero carbon certified, in line with our sustainability priorities. A slide on this topic is available in the appendices, if you wish to look at it. We are therefore entering 2024 in an excellent position. We have a new site ready to receive new customers later in the second half of the year. Even though we have felt weakness in the food service niche, our diversification gives us resilience. We are still in market share gaining mode and have the capacity for future growth. Our teams are motivated and committed. We are in an excellent position to win and execute our strategic plan. Pierre, I'll turn the floor over to you, so that you can discuss our financial results. Thank you, Louis.
I'm pleased to be with you here today to share some of the highlights of our results for fiscal 2023 and the first quarter of fiscal 2024. Let's turn to slide number 19, please. Consolidated sales for 2023 rose by 14.8% or 16.4% when adjusted for the extra week in the previous year, to reach CAD 659.1 million. This increase came from the distribution sector, which rose by 21.8%, while the wholesale sector fell by 3.3%. Growth in the distribution sector was the result of our efforts to gain market share, with the conclusion of two major new distribution agreements for the province.
Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA for continuing operations reached CAD 37.6 million, or 5.7% of sales, compared with CAD 29.1 million or 5.1% of sales in 2022. Higher sales volumes, improved gross margins, thanks to a better product and customer mix, and the contribution of our April 2022 acquisitions, all contributed to this success. Next slide, please. Net earnings in 2023 improved to reach CAD 6 million or CAD 0.05 per share, up from CAD 4.6 million or CAD 0.04 per share in 2022, due to the improved EBITDA. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to CAD 28.9 million in 2023, compared with CAD 19.3 million in 2022, due to a lower working capital utilization and improved profitability.... Page 21.
We ended 2023 with net debt of CAD 61.5 million, up from CAD 47.8 million at the end of the previous year, therefore, an increase of CAD 13.7 million. Although we invested nearly CAD 18 million dollars into our new Saint-Bruno site during the year, improved profitability, strong cash flow, and prudent balance sheet management enabled us to maintain our leverage at 2.4 times, up slightly from 2.3 times the previous year. Next slide. Now, for a quick review of our first quarter financial results released on May 2nd. From the first quarter onward, we reached consolidated sales for the first quarter, and, they fell by 2% to CAD 133.9 million.
Our distribution activities, which account for 75% of our consolidated sales, were slightly up by 0.4%. Our wholesale activities were down by 8.7%. Our efforts to diversify our customer base have enabled us to mitigate the impact of macroeconomic pressures and food services. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations were at CAD 4.9 million, or 3.7% of sales in Q1 2024, compared to CAD 5.6 million, or 4.2% of sales as of Q1 last year. Although we maintained our gross margins, the reduction in sales volumes weighted on Adjusted EBITDA. Next slide, please.
Net income for the first quarter of 2024 was CAD 0.4 million, down from CAD 1.7 million in Q1 of the previous year, due to lower profitability and higher amortization and financial expenses, mainly related to rental obligations associated with the new Saint-Bruno site. It should be noted that seasonality, sales, and profitability of the first quarter are generally lower. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to CAD 11.7 million in the first quarter, versus CAD 0.8 million in the first quarter of 2023, mainly due to lower working capital requirements. Next slide, please. Slide 24. We end the first quarter with net debt of CAD 56.8 million, compared with CAD 61.5 million at the end of 2023.
During the quarter, our debt leverage went down a little bit to 2.3, compared to 2.4, despite the acquisition of some assets and distributors in the west of Quebec. We have annualized revenues due to these distributors of CAD 15 million. We are still very careful when we manage and approach our balance sheet. We still have CAD 25 million available on our banking facilities. During the quarter, we recognized our debt, and we have CAD 71.8 million authorized, including a CAD 50 million revolver and CAD 21.8 million term loan, as well as a CAD 35 million approach. Louis, I'll let you conclude this portion of the presentation. Thank you, Louis and Pierre. It is now question period. Pascal Rodier will explain how the question period will take place. Pascal, over to you. Pascal? Pascal? I'm sorry, I was...
I'm looking for Pascal. Okay, we can hear now, Pierre. Perhaps I'll just explain how question period will take place. Yes. Yeah, we're, we're live? Yes, absolutely. So I will continue. I will make just a few reminders. First of all, only registered shareholders and proxy holders may ask questions. You must write your question at the top of the screen in the messages box. For the smooth running of the meeting, we ask that your question or comment be succinct and of general interest to all shareholders. Thank you, Pascal. So before questions, in conclusion, we are very satisfied with the results of our 2023 fiscal year, as well as the move. Everything was in line with the budget, and it tells us how cohesive our teams are and how everybody involved is so professional in our work.
In the first quarter of 2024, our results were slightly affected by the food service sector, but our diversification spared us from a more significant drop in revenues than the industry suffered. Our transformation strategy continues to serve us well, with a month of March showing signs of recovery in the food service sector and the summer season ahead of us. We have everything in place to meet demand. We have motivated teams and capacity for growth. I'm proud of all Colabor employees, and this is just the beginning. We have a number of roads that are open to us so that we can continue to improve and grow our business, generate efficiencies, and continue to deliver value to our shareholders and all our stakeholders. The entire Colabor team is enthusiastic about Colabor's future, and in particular, about the potential that lies in Western Quebec.
Thank you, and turn it over back to you, Warren. I'm sorry, Louis, I moved too quickly through the question period, so I'm going to open up again, once again, the question period. It is time to do that. All right, so we will give everyone just a few moments to ask questions. To all shareholders, if you would like to ask questions, the time is now. Okay. Given that there are no questions, I declare the end of the meeting. On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to thank and congratulate the management and all employees of Colabor Group on the results of 2023 and on the successful completion of the move of the head office and warehouse from Boucherville to our new location in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville.
These new facilities strengthen our operations and our ability to serve our customers, and will play a key role in our quest for sustained growth and profitability. On that note, I would like to thank you for attending Colabor Group's annual meeting, and I look forward to seeing you soon.