Good morning, everyone. Please take your seats and we will call a meeting to order. Just be prepared with your headphones because the meeting will be more or less fifty-fifty French and English. So unless you're totally comfortable in both, have your headphones ready. If you're not comfortable in either, there's not much we can do
for you.
You. Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is John Manley, Chair of CAE's Board of Directors. In the last 11 years, as a member of CAE's Board, I have witnessed firsthand the evolution and growth of this great global company and its employees' commitment to the company's core values and strategy. I am proud to now be chairing its Board. And on behalf of the board and the management of CAE, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this Annual Meeting of Shareholders.
I'm also pleased to welcome those of you who are joining us for the live broadcast of this meeting on the Internet. The meeting will be conducted in French and English, and equipment for simultaneous translation has been made available at the entrance. You may address your questions in French or in English. With me on the podium today are Marc Parran, President and Chief Executive Officer and Director Sonia Branko, Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer and Mark Hounsell, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary. Fiscal year 2019 was another strong and fruitful year for CAE with a solid financial performance.
We once again booked a record backlog and management's outlook remains positive in light of anticipated robust growth in the worldwide demand for our end to end training services. CAE's directors have the highest confidence in the management team and its results driven corporate strategy.
At this time, I'd like to introduce our current Board of Directors seated in the 1st row. I'd ask them to stand and remain standing as their names are called. Please withhold any recognition until all have been introduced. So more or less in alphabetical order, Margaret Milson from Albuquerque, New Mexico the Honorable Michael Fortier from Montreal Alan McGibbon from Toronto Francois Olivier from Montreal Michael Roche from Montreal General Norton Schwartz from Virginia Andrew Stevens from Gloucestershire, U. K.
And Catherine Stevenson from Toronto. These persons, Mark Parran and myself, are your current Board of Directors. I'm also pleased to present you a new nominee to our Board, Mary Anne Harrison. Please stand up, Mary Anne. Mary Anne is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of John Hancock Life Insurance Company, the U.
S. Division of Toronto based Manulife Financial Corporation. She's a recognized senior leader with extensive experience in the insurance and financial sectors with a strong focus on the customer experience. So thank you for joining us, Maryann. I'd like to thank Kate Stevenson, who is not eligible to stand for reelection to the Board consistent with our Director term limit requirements, for her consistently wise counsel and for her many years of dedication and contribution to CAE.
So stand up one more time, Kate, please. We also have the independent directors of the CAUSA Board with us at today's meeting, and I'd like to introduce them to you as well. General Douglas Brown from Dade City, Florida is Chair of the U. S. Board.
General Brown, Admiral Timothy Keating from Virginia Beach, Virginia and the Honorable Sue Peyton from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thank you for your service. And I'd also like to introduce Mr. Brian Mora, the Chair of the Board of CAE USA Mission Solutions, a new business unit formed in 2018 to pursue U. S.
Department of Defense higher level security programs. Thank you. I'd now like to proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting.
First of all, I now call to order the annual meeting of the corporation's shareholders. Mr. Mark Hounsult will act as Secretary of the meeting. I have here the certificate of our transfer agent, Computershare Trust Company of Canada. Mark has it.
We have it indicating that proper notice of the meeting has been given in accordance with the Canada Business Corporations Act and the bylaws of the corporation. I direct that a copy of the notice with proof of service be kept by the secretary with the records of this meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I appoint Mark Thompson and Claire Girard of Computershares as scrutineers for this meeting. CAA's bylaws provide that a quorum of shareholders is present at a meeting of shareholders. If 2 or more persons holding not less than 25% of the shares entitled to vote at the meeting are present in person or represented by proxy.
The scrutineers have advised that we have such a quorum.
The meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. Immediately following the formal agenda, the President's report will be presented by our CEO, Marc Perrault and Sonia Branko, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide a financial update. An opportunity will be provided at the end of that presentation for shareholders to raise general questions. Proxy holders and registered shareholders who have not previously provided us with their proxies will have been provided with a ballot for the motions to be passed today. So some of you may have in hand a ballot.
You should know that while each of the ballots cast today will be accounted for in the final results, Proxies lodged with our registrar and transfer agent before this meeting allow me as proxy holder to determine the outcome of the motions of each of the motions that will go to a vote today. So if you are a registered holder or proxy holder and you have not already voted by proxy, you should have received today with the agenda of the meeting a ballot form regarding the items of business to come before the meeting. At the appropriate times, I will ask you to complete the ballot as it pertains to each item of business. Following consideration of the last item of business, the scrutineers will collect the ballot forms and tabulate the results of the votes. When each item of business is completed and the ballots have been completed as a result of the proxies received in advance of the meeting, I intend to declare the motion carried or defeated even though all of the votes may not yet have been counted or a final report may not yet be available.
I'll do that to keep the pace of the meeting moving along. There will be a formal scrutineers report prepared and made available for any person to consult at the end of the meeting. The detailed results will also be publicly available on sedar.com in the coming days. In order to facilitate the flow of the meeting, we've also asked particular shareholders or proxy holders to move or second the motions placed before the meeting just to keep things rolling right along using the microphones on either side of the room. I hereby table the minutes of the Annual Meeting of Shareholders held on August 14, 2018, which will be inserted in the minute book of the corporation.
Our Secretary has the minutes of that meeting. Copies of the minutes will be made available upon request. It's fascinating reading, so please get your copy while they last.
The next matter is to place before the meeting. The financial statements and auditors report thereon for the year ended March 31, 2019, copies of which were made available to shareholders of record and are available for consultation at the registration desk. I will entertain questions with respect to the financial statements of the corporation in the general question period. Let us now turn to the next item of business, the election of directors. The management proxy circular contains a list of the 10 nominees recommended for election as director.
The nominees to be elected as directors are Margaret Bilson, the Honorable Michael Forte, Marian Harrison, Alan McGibbon, the Honorable John Manley, Francois Olivier, Marc Perron, Michael Roche, General Norton Schwartz and Andrew J. Stephens. Pursuant to resolution adopted by the Board of Directors, the number of directors has been set at 10 and 10 eligible candidates have been nominated.
I'll now ask that Mrs. Lu move to elect each of the nominees as directors.
I so move.
Thank you, Jenny. Would Frederic Deschamps second this motion? I second the motion. Thank you, Frederic. I'd now ask each shareholder or proxy holder to record his or her vote on the ballot provided by indicating whether you vote for or whether you withhold from voting respect of each individual nominee whose name is indicated on the ballot provided.
Ballots will be collected and counted following the last item of business. It just happens that the proxies that we have in hand allow me to announce that the motion will be carried and the 10 directors identified in the management proxy circular are hereby elected for the next year. The next item on the agenda is the appointment of auditors. I'll ask Sandra Rufael to introduce a motion to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers, chartered accountants, auditors of the corporation to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting of shareholders and for authorization for the directors to fix their remuneration. Sandra?
I so move.
Would Laurent Desmain second this motion? I second the motion. Thank you, Laurent. I'd ask that each shareholder or proxy holder record his or her vote again on the ballot provided by indicating whether you vote for or withhold from voting on the resolution appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditors. And again, I'm able to indicate that the motion is carried, and I declare that PricewaterhouseCoopers are hereby appointed as auditors of the corporation and the Board of Directors is authorized to fix their remuneration.
CAE's management compensation is fully disclosed in the proxy circular made available to all shareholders in advance of this AGM. The CAE Board of Directors believes that the company's compensation program is appropriate and that it is directly linked to the personal and corporate performance. We will now vote on the following resolution, somewhat simplified from last year, I'd say, Mr. Secretary. The Chairman's suggestion, yes.
That's a very good suggestion. Resolve that the shareholders accept the approach to executive compensation disclosed in the management proxy circular And I understand that Alexis Cote wishes to propose a motion for approval.
I so move.
Thank you, Alexei. And would Daniel Marchino second the motion? I second the motion. Thank you, Daniel. Again, I would ask that each shareholder or proxy holder record his or her vote on the ballot provided by indicating whether you vote for or against the resolution.
And again, I'm in a position to declare that this motion carries and the resolution to accept the corporation's approach to executive compensation is duly approved and confirmed. If there are any ballots to be collected, please raise your hand and the scrutineers will collect them now. So there's a ballot there. Are there any others? And just to confirm, those votes will be added to the total that was received in advance of the meeting by proxy.
Thank you very much.
The next item on the agenda is the President's and CEO's address to shareholders. Before I turn the podium over to our CEO, Marc Barron, let's watch a short video produced by the management team to thank CAE employees. The Board of Directors and myself wanted to show it to you to give you a glimpse of the past year and CAE's company culture. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, Welcome to CIE's global headquarters. Thank you for joining us for our Annual Meeting of Shareholders.
As you saw in the video, our customers are at the very heart of everything we do. And more than ever, everyone at CAE is working together not to simply satisfy our customers, but to delight them. We are a diverse and large family of individuals. There are more than 10,000 of us today working in different business units in over 35 countries around the world. As our one CAE value suggests, we work as a team with one singular focus: to deliver excellence in training.
At an ever growing number of airlines, defense forces and health care professionals are recognizing CAE for its reputation as the industry leader and are entrusting us as their training partner of choice. And that is at the heart of our company's vision. This was a milestone year for CAE. For the very first time in our history, we delivered more than 1,000,000 hours of civil aviation training. At the same time, we grew into what is now the largest civil aviation training company in the world with nearly 300 full flight simulators in more than 50 locations.
Every year, we train 220,000 civil and defense crew members, including 135 pilots and thousands of health care professionals. We work with more than 300 airlines, major business aircraft operators as well as 50 defense forces worldwide. Throughout our history, since the very beginning, we have been driven by a noble purpose that is to make the world a safer place. That is what motivates us every day. And it is gratifying for me to know that the training we provide helps make air travel safer, prepares defense forces to be mission ready and enables medical professionals to save lives.
What a wonderful mission. And this mission drives a passionate and committed workforce to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction.
This was a record year. I can't tell you how proud I am of the team and the performances we've achieved. It was quite simply our best year ever, bar none. As shareholders, I trust you shared my excitement. Our share price increased over that time by just looking at last year, over 30%.
If you look at the past decade, over 4 50%, far exceeding the TSX Composite Index in the same period. Underscoring the performance going forward and a positive long term view, I'm very pleased to announce that CAE's Board of Directors has approved today a $0.01 increase or 10% increase to CAE's quarterly dividend, which becomes $0.11 a share effective September 30. That represents CA's 9th consecutive dividend increase in as many years. Let's have a look at the different accomplishments we've had in the past year. In Civil, the largest of our 3 business units, we're making a very valuable contribution in shaping the future of training by delivering innovative and full service, what we call cadet to captain train solutions.
Last year, we sold an unprecedented 78 full flight simulators, which is not only a CAE record, but it is truly an industry record. And we secured a higher a high number of long term contracts with airlines, which is a sign of a healthy pipeline and of our ability to accelerate the pace at which airlines are willing to outsource their training in all or in part to C8. Among those contracts we signed were its 10 year pilot training agreement with Easyjet, an exclusive multiyear pilot training agreements with Asiana and with CityJet and as well an exclusive 15 year training outsourcing contract with Avianca in Colombia. We've also grown our position in business aviation training with the purchase of Bombardier Business Aircraft Training Unit. This is a transformative move for CAE and indeed our largest acquisition ever.
We're very pleased to welcome as part of that acquisition 250 skilled employees to the CAE family and which greatly expands our market addressability to include operators of the nearly 5,000 Bombardier business jets flying worldwide. In defense and security, our contribution is essential to providing training solutions to Allied Defense Forces. And amongst the key contracts that we won last year were the United States Air Force's C-1 hundred and thirty H Air Crew Training System Program, as well as U. S. Navy's contracted instruction services program.
And we had major competitive wins with OEMs such as Lockheed Martin on the Canadian Surface Combatant Program and General Atomics on the UK's Protector Program. We also signed training systems contracts with the Royal New Zealand Air Force for the NH90 helicopter, the German Air Force on both their Eurofighter and Tornado aircraft, Lockheed Martin C-130J for the United States Air Force and with Boeing on the P-8A aircraft with the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force. We anticipate new growth opportunities in the United States with the strategic acquisition we did last year of Alpha Omega Change Engineering. As part of that agreement, we welcomed 600 talented and cleared employees to CAE, which gives us now the ability to pursue, win and execute programs, which we couldn't before because of a higher degree of classification required to execute and win those contracts.
In healthcare, CAE is playing a leading role in making health care safer. Our training solutions are helping health care professionals and caregivers to hone their skills on patient simulators and thus as opposed to real patients, thus reducing the risk for medical errors, which, of course, is good. The steady stream of new simulation products that we have brought to market and the expansion of our sales force led to accelerated revenue growth. We launched innovative products such as CAE Luna, our simulator for neonatal and infant care training and our emergency care mannequin, CAE ARIES. We also welcomed Rekha Ranganathan, our new President of CAE Healthcare, who brings deep commercial experience in the health care industry to help take CAE Healthcare to a higher level of scale.
And the value CAE creates goes well beyond financial results. Last year, we expanded our commitments in corporate social responsibility. We were active on many fronts, among others, promoting workplace diversity and inclusion, implementing sound environmental practices at our sites worldwide and launching a program to recognize and encourage employee volunteering and by encouraging them to do this. We also launched our new ethical principles for the responsible use of data analytics. As a leader in digital innovation, we want to affirm our commitment to adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct in our dealings with employees, customers and all other stakeholders when it comes to the use of data.
I now invite you to read our interactive online annual activity and corporate social responsibility report to find out how our employees are helping to make the world a better, a better, cleaner and safer place. Now I would like to ask Sonia Brancour, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide us with an overview of our financial results. Sonia?
Merci Marc?
Thank you, Marika. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As Marcus mentioned, he delivered a record financial performance in fiscal 2019. Annual revenue was up by 17% to $3,300,000,000 and annual net income before specific items was at $335,200,000 or $1.25 per share, which is up 13% compared to the previous year. I'm especially pleased with our record $4,000,000,000 in annual orders and a record $9,500,000 backlog, which underlines CAE's positive momentum as the world leader in aviation training.
Overall for CAE, our strong operational performance translated into a good year from a cash flow standpoint. We generated a near one to 1 return of net income to free cash flow in fiscal 2019. Our strong balance sheet, together with highly supportive capital markets, enable us to pursue significant customer driven accretive investment opportunities and to continue our growth. Last year, we closed in our 13% multiyear return on capital employed target with an increase in return on capital to 12.9%. For fiscal 2020, we're off to a good start in Q1 with 14% revenue growth and 15% higher operating income before specific items.
Our earnings per share was $0.24 before specific items compared to $0.26 last year. On the order front, we booked over $940,000,000 of orders for a $9,400,000 backlog. In the
fiscal year, our outlook for growth remains unchanged. Overall, we expect to continue exceeding underlying market growth. In civil, we expect operating income to grow in the upper 20% range on continued strong demand for our training solutions. In defense, we expect mid to high single digit percentage operating income growth as we deliver from the backlog and continue to win opportunities from a large pipeline. For healthcare, we expect to achieve double digit growth with our expanded sales force and the continued launch of innovative solutions.
We continue to concentrate on our 3 capital allocation priorities. 1st, investing in superior and sustainable growth, either through acquisitions, which give us additional capabilities or through continuing to deploy full flight simulators to support our client contracts or the outsourcing of training by our customers. We have significant headroom in our core markets with highly accretive opportunities for investment, while continuing to deliver accretive returns. Illustrating this point, the capital invested in simulators throughout our global training network over the last 5 years has already ramped up to a 20% to 30% range of pre tax incremental returns within only 2 to 3 years of deployment. Our second capital allocation priority is providing our shareholders with current returns while generating long term growth.
We have consistently increased our dividend commensurate with the growth of CAE and the significant cash flow it generates. And in recent years, we have instituted share buyback program. Taken together, over the last 5 years, CE has returned more than $620,000,000 to shareholders. Our third capital allocation priority is maintaining a strong balance sheet. With a strong free cash flow generation inherent to our business and the high level of free cash flow we expect from our recent training investments, we expect to further strengthen our balance sheet by deleveraging in the next 24 to 36 months.
We are well positioned for accretive growth and returns, supporting our vision to be the training partner of choice. Thank you for your attention. And I'll turn the podium over to our CEO, Marc
Thank you, Sonia. So as you can see, we truly had a fantastic year, and our strategy to be the training partner of choice is working well for all of our stakeholders. Now here's a glimpse of what we have accomplished over the past 4 years since we launched our pivot to training strategy, and I think we can be pleased with the results. We gained greater access to large and growing markets. And we've continued to lead the market with the 230 full flight simulators sold over the past 4 years, and we built the world's largest civil aviation training network.
On the defense side, we deployed 2 thirds of all new high fidelity simulators, and we became a top tier training system integrator. We expanded our offering in health care to pursue larger markets
at a
greater volume. CIE's long term transformation has been profound For a company which recently derived most of its revenue from products, our revenues are now highly recurrent with over 60% coming from training. We're extremely well positioned for superior growth, thanks to secular tailwinds in all of our markets, to our innovation leadership and to our talented employees. As we look ahead, we will continue building on our positive momentum as a trusted partner for our customers.
We have an excellent pipeline of airline outsourcing opportunities, and our well differentiated position gives us even greater potential for more long term recurrent training partnerships for CAE. And air travel is expected to continue to grow. In civil aviation alone, we forecast that 300,000 new pilots will be required on a global basis over the next decade to support this growth and to replace retirements. And more and more airlines are turning to CAE to help them recruit and train their cadets, their next generation pilots. Southwest Airlines was the latest one.
We announced that 2 weeks ago. And as a leader in aviation training, we want to encourage young people to consider the noble profession of pilots. Trained pilots play a critical role in maintaining aviation as the safest mode of transportation bar none. And to help those youngsters discover the profession and what the training journey entails, we held numerous recruitment drives globally. We created a pilot portal.
We launched a CA pilot account on Instagram and on Facebook. We increased our follower base by allowing our cadets, our customer pilots, our instructors to take over the channel themselves every week to share their experience live, and it's working. And we strongly believe that we have to tap into the full pool of talent in the industry. And that means that more women need to consider becoming airline pilots. Only 5%, to me a shocking number, only 5% of today's airline pilots are women.
And to develop ambassadors and role models for other women, we've launched the CAE Women in Flight Scholarships. You saw that on the video a while ago. Every year, these exceptional women will publicly share their own pilot journey. We've already announced the first three winners with our airline partners. You see them on the screen, Georgina Thomas Watson, who is a cadet with Easyjet Daniela Sociedo Oroso, a cadet with Aeromexico and Bisma Petafi, a cadet with CityJet.
And we'll announce additional winners in the coming weeks with our partners AirAsia and American Airlines. In Defense and Security, the market is also publicly supportive with governments around the world placing a high priority on mission readiness and looking at partners like CAE to help create and maintain critical operations personnel, including, of course, pilots. We're seeing good momentum as we convert a large bid pipeline into orders, and we expect to continue winning our fair share by building on the successes that we've established as a marquee training services provider. And finally, to make health care safer, health care professionals are increasingly looking at aviation and simulation based training as a model. Who else is better positioned than the leader in aviation training to have an impact in this area?
CA, of course, and CA has the broadest portfolio of innovative solutions, products and services in healthcare. And our solutions are used by medical device manufacturers, hospitals, colleges, universities worldwide. And we believe that the use of simulation will continue to expand. Already, value based healthcare in the United States, a model by which hospitals and physicians are paid based on patient health outcomes, which is a new impact. That's opening up new opportunities for CAE by linking training to the effectiveness and of course the successful outcomes.
And I'm confident in the long term prospects for healthcare to become a material part of CAE. What's always fueled our growth and will continue to do so in the future at CAE is our ability to innovate. Innovation is really in the DNA of this company. I always say it's our secret sauce. Last year, we made the bold commitment to invest $1,000,000,000 in digital innovation over 5 years to revolutionize the way pilots, aircrew and healthcare training is conducted.
We will harness the power and are harnessing the power of digital technologies to delight our customers and improve our customers' experience throughout their journey. And to accelerate our ability to leverage data analytics, artificial intelligence, we've established this past year the Digital Accelerator team. It's a focused team, allowing us to build competitive differentiators to please our customers faster. We stood up that team. It's 100 strong now and really like you to be to hear a little bit from them while looking at this particular video.
Developers, designers, and all the people work together to create a digital solution to a problem or pain point that we have with our customers.
Here is a new solution that our customers now use to provide us with their trading requirements in a quick, easy and efficient way. Customers are loving it. And now, this new act allows pilots to prepare for their upcoming training events at a distance and before they arrive at the training center. We've also created a way for instructors to show their clients real time insights into how their session went and then provide personalized coursework to enhance their development. It's a small team that's powering a huge engine.
At the heart of our success are people. We have a talented team, and we want to continue to attract and retain the best employees by maintaining what we have. Well, how do we do this? Truly, it is by continuing to be an employer of choice. And our 1 CAE culture, which is vital, places a high value on employee empowerment and engagement.
We listen to our employees' feedback through biweekly pulse surveys, and we react quickly. We have also increased our focus on wellness and by promoting physical and mental health. We now promote employee development through regular conversations focused on coaching as well as agile goals
and
things move quickly. We have started transforming our workspaces to optimize teamwork, creativity and open innovation, all the while continuing to focus on collaboration, of course, on having fun at work. Now every day is different, and that's why employees can choose the work setup that works for them. So it's about the atmosphere. There's more focus on collaboration and the energy in these spaces is extraordinary.
And shortly, there will be 1500 employees in our Marcell offices who will be sharing different types of work environments. And I very much believe that it is imperative that every single employee feels that they can contribute to our success with no exceptions and that they can understand how personally they can contribute. And our diversity and inclusion initiative aims to build a more open and inclusive workplace, where every employee can succeed and fulfill their potential. We therefore have placed our first focus on gender diversity. I'd say, again, my personal mission is to ensure that everybody at CAE is able to realize their full potential and that they have every possible opportunity for advancement.
And we're making good progress. CAE was selected for the 2019 Bloomberg Gender Equality Index. So it is the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for 2019. And that's not minor because we're side by side with 2 30 worldwide companies that are trailblazers in their commitment to transparency in workplace gender reporting, and they're recognized worldwide by Bloomberg. In conclusion, I would like to commend CAE employees for their dedication and their excellence, and I have to thank them for their contributions.
We are one CAE together for our customers. And I am proud to be leading this great company, which is an industry leader. We play a key role in making the world a better and safer place for everyone. I would also like to thank all the members of our board. I would like to thank the members of the Board of United States for their precious advice and their support.
And of course, I would like to thank you, our shareholders, for your trust. Thank you very much.
Well, that will give you an idea why we on your Board of Directors are so also so proud and excited by what we're seeing happening here at CAE as it continues to transform itself in a transforming world. We're very proud to be part of it and very proud of the of what our employees and what our management team has been able to do.
We are now ready for the question period. You are entitled to ask a question if you are a shareholder of record or a proxy holder of the company. Please make your way to a microphone and identify yourselves as either a shareholder or a proxy holder and give your name for the records of the meeting before asking a question. Do we have any questions from our shareholders?
Mr. Wilson, you may have a question. I'm not sure who's to answer. Over here, yes.
Good morning. My name is Guillerbe. I'm a shareholder of the company. And I'd like to congratulate you, Mr. President and your team for the results that you have achieved over the last 2 years, which enabled me to maximize, of course, my investment in the company.
But my question is this. We're all familiar with the problem of the Boeing 737 MAX. And I'd like to know if BAE CAE could be part of the solution. So I have some questions about the management of this. We know all about simulation.
But my second question is not so much a question. It has to do with your website. I look through the entire list of simulation devices, Airbus or Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier. But I would like to know is this are we training pilots for the 737, the 747, the airbuses? So those are my 2 questions.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your question. Thank you very much for your congratulations. We appreciate that. For the 737 MAX, we're of course can't say what cannot be said because there are investigations underway.
But right now, we're working in close cooperation with Boeing and they're very pleased with this. I've received personal letters of congratulations from the CEO of Boeing. He's thanking us and congratulating us to the work that we're doing with them. So we will be part of the solution. That is when Boeing will have completed the design of their solution and once it has been approved by the certification authorities throughout the world, then we'll be on the front lines in order to upgrade all of the simulators, whether these be the 737 MAXs or the new ones deployed at large and also the remote controls.
As well, no doubt, we'll also be involved in the simulators in the 37s, which might be 737 NGs. It all depends on the solution, but they might be used for training. So it's clear that we'll be part of the solution. And I think it's obvious that there will be a bottleneck once the aircraft are in the air. There will be a great need for training.
And of course, we'll be on the front line so that we can meet with that demand, which will be considerable. As to the website, I think that is something we can certainly look at. I think we're doing this. And Helene Gagnon is here. I think she'll come and see you afterwards so that you can she can give you help with what you're looking at specifically, what you're looking for.
But certainly, we train people in all of the flight simulators. Thank you very much.
Is there a question? Other questions? Yes.
Yes. My name is Kabor Mateusz. I'm a shareholder. And I know that these days, there's a lot of protectionism in the world, especially protectionism policies coming from the U. S.
And so CAE sells a lot of products and services to the U. S. And so I'm always worried about risk. So is there are there any programs or safeguards against increased protectionism coming at us from the U. S?
I would tell you that we certainly have not been affected by any such measures anywhere. In fact, you would look at our business as testimony by the fact that we have our U. S. Board of Directors here who have held very senior positions all branches of U. S.
Military and Special Operations Commander, who was Chairman of our U. S. Board, General Brown. We have a U. S.
Proxy board that allows us to operate at the highest levels of security within the United States Defense Department. I think test is testimony to the fact that I think we're not being affected by protectionist measures. And on the other side, I would tell you is that Canada itself is recognized as a key partner from that standpoint and it really covers the defense side. But as a whole, I think that when you consider CAE, I could tell that last year we supplied over 80% of the world's simulators And we are the largest by far training provider in the world. And we're truly global.
So it's hard we're quite essential to the whole training infrastructure in aviation, which is a regulated business. So I think that we're well insulated. You can never predict everything, but I think we're quite insulated. And we work with U. S.
Airlines, U. S. Partners, and we have about 3,000 employees in the United States. So long answer, but we don't see it.
Do we manufacture any simulators in the U. S?
What we do, we manufacture the bulk of what we do in simulators right here in Montreal in this location. When we what we do in the United States specifically, we have a facility in Tampa, Florida, where we basically integrate simulators specifically that we would let's say we fabricate simulators for military aircraft here. We'll typically send it over there. We do integration work, so any sensitive stuff will be done there. But other than that, no.
We'll do services to conduct the training that side, but not manufacturing.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Mr. Castrone, other questions? Seeing none,
With the consent of the floor, I declare this meeting concluded. Thank you very much for your attendance today. Now I would like to ask you to join us for some light refreshments that will be served in the lobby. Thank you very much and congratulations, Mr. Perron, to you and to your team.
Thank you.