Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Crown Capital Q4 2022 results conference call. Please note that today's call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties as well as other factors that may cause actual financial results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the estimated future results, performance, or achievement expressed implied by those forward-looking statements. For a description of the risks associated with Crown's business, please refer to the company's most recently filed Annual Information Form and its filings for fiscal 2022 at SEDAR or on the company's IR website. For your information, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Chris Johnson. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to today's call. I'm joined, as usual, by our Chief Financial Officer, Michael Overvelde. Looking back on the year, 2022 was a mixed bag of wins and losses for Crown as we continued the transformation to a capital-light growth company. Overall, we are happy with the progress that we made with the operating businesses, the losses on our portfolio assets are weighing heavily on our combined results. Dealing with the bad news first, we reported a meaningful loss for the year because of loss provisions on Crown Partners Fund and impairment charges in Crown Power Fund. On the alternative lending side, two of the fund's seven remaining loans experienced large write-downs in 2022. One of the problematic loans is in final liquidation, and the loss is expected to be permanent.
The other loan is to a previously highly successful borrower that experienced a significant shock to its business. It's currently undergoing a business and financial restructuring. We believe this business has strong fundamentals, a deeply committed and competent management team. We're hopeful that our situation will be resolved and possibly reverse the loss provision. Of the remaining five loans, one loan repaid in Q1. The remaining four loans are all performing well and we expect to be repaid over the next 12 to 18 months. Our distributed power platform has 6 projects operating at the end of the year. There are additional seven projects under development. We are expected to become operational this year. Our focus remains completing all projects under development and optimizing the projects in operation.
The impairments we took were to deal with inventory that was on previously operating projects that have been decommissioned. Don't see this as a long-term recurring item, and we are actively not pursuing any new projects at this time. While this fund has not performed to our expectations, our Alberta-based projects are showing strong profit potential, and we're expecting to commission the first merchant power facility within the next two months. As we're nearing the completion of the projects and development, we're also reviewing our strategic options for this platform, which includes sale of some or all of the assets. Network Services Group continues to see growth in revenue for Galaxy's enterprise customers as we see increased activities around newer satellite infrastructure. This growth is being offset in part by WireIE contracts reaching end of life, which we've discussed in recent quarters.
While revenues remain basically flat year-over-year, we are seeing an increase in end-of-life decommissioning costs, which is hampering our profitability. As we've highlighted in recent quarters, Galaxy is developing world leadership in the deployment of low Earth orbit satellite technology, which at this time is being used by large commercial users, but we see a long-term application for entire communities in remote locations. Galaxy has become one of OneWeb's fastest-growing distribution partners, having deployed over 85 locations, meeting a range of customers' needs, connecting anywhere between 30 and 800 users per site. Through these engagements, Galaxy has developed a close relationship with OneWeb, which we believe will lead to continued growth opportunities. For example, subsequent to year-end, Galaxy entered a five-year purchase commitment to deliver low Earth connectivity across Canada, including a new internet service in Nunavut.
OneWeb's technology greatly improved connectivity in the territory and is an important milestone for the region, an essential service that supports education, health, care, commerce, and just general well-being. Galaxy's role at Nunavut is underway with a target to have all 25 communities connected by the end of 2023. Galaxy has also secured several initial 5G private wireless deployments. We hope to gain extensive knowledge with this new technology and further additional opportunities in mining, community internet access, as well as warehouses. We also made big strides with Community Network Partners in 2022, and the key catalyst for this division was the Ontario Connects contract. We're being awarded a CAD 150 million subsidy from the Government of Ontario to build a network in Northern Ontario.
This will be the major focus of ours in 2023 as the initial projects move through defined phase and construction is anticipated to start in Q2 2023. A second major growth initiative for Crown is the third-party logistics platform, GoDirect, which we acquired in Q2 last year. This segment represented 46% of our revenue in Q4, reported a modest EBITDA loss in the period. For the period since acquisition, the business was essentially break even in terms of pre-tax income. These near-term results, of course, do not reflect our expectation as the potential of this business once it hits scale. We're in the process of ramping up several new facilities.
As previously mentioned, the business has four facilities, three of which were opened last year, including a large facility in Columbus, Ohio that is ramping up, and we expect a full by the end of this year. A smaller facility in Calgary that opened in Q3 that is expected to reach full capacity in Q2 of this year, and a mid-size facility in Reno, Nevada opened late last year and already serving several customers, and we're also expected to hit full capacity later this year. Looking ahead with the sales pipeline, these warehouses as they're filled will meaningfully increase the profits from GoDirect . In the fourth quarter, we also completed the restructuring of PenEquity, bringing the management company under Crown's umbrella as an operating subsidiary. Our focus is to generate recurring revenue from property management contracts and additional income from development projects.
The development proposal for the additional density at the PenEquity's residential site in Barrie continues to move forward. We're experiencing reasonably favorable feedback. We expect to have approvals in place in Q2, at which time we're gonna look for strategic options for this project. We're also advancing a residential project in Stoney Creek, albeit this is at more preliminary stages, so timing is somewhat unknown at this time. Our Lumbermen's business continues to generate good progress. It launched some new products in the fourth quarter that are being well-received by its marketplace. We have a number of new products and just expansion planned for 2023 that are gonna help increase revenue as well as cash flow. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike, who will review the financials.
All right. Thanks, Chris. Good morning to everyone on the line. Our Q4 and full year 2022 release financial statements and MD&A were all filed last night. As usual, given that Chris has covered, I guess the operating highlights, I will keep this brief. Starting with revenues, compared with the same period last year, total revenue for Q4 was up by 84%, to CAD 14.1 million. That growth, of course, is mainly due to the addition of our distribution services business, GoDirect , which we acquired about halfway through the year and which was not in last year's numbers.
For the full year, revenue increased by 5% over 2021 to CAD 44.8 million as the incremental revenue from the addition of GoDirect in mid-2022 more than offset the elimination of interest in fee revenue related to Crown Partners Fund that we stopped including in our consolidated revenues beginning in Q3 2021. Outside of distribution services revenue, our only material revenue source currently is revenues from our Network Services segment, and those decreased slightly year-over-year from CAD 7 million last year to CAD 6.6 million in Q4 this year, which as Chris mentioned, was the result of growth from Galaxy being offset by year-over-year declines of WireIE.
Compared with Q3, Network Services revenues were lower in Q4 due primarily to seasonal factors, which was the same thing that happened in 2021, of course. For the full year, Network Services revenue was CAD 27.3 million versus CAD 27.6 million in the prior year. For the full year, this segment contributed net income before income taxes of CAD 3.1 million, and that's inclusive of depreciation expense totaling CAD 3.9 million and accrued decommissioning costs that we incurred in Q4 of CAD 0.6 million. That compares to 2021 when we reported net income before income tax of CAD 4.2 million, which included depreciation expense of CAD 3.6 million.
Based on the multiple growth initiatives that Chris touched on, this business is well positioned for meaningful expansion in both top and bottom-line results over time. Fourth quarter revenue from distribution services was roughly equivalent to Network Services at $6.5 million, and the business generated revenue of $14.1 million for the period since acquisition. From a profitability perspective, this segment had a net loss before income taxes of $1.9 million in 2022. That did, of course, include depreciation expense of $1.9 million, so essentially breakeven on EBITDA. As Chris also mentioned, we expect our three new warehouse facilities, which are all at various stages of startup, to provide solid and growing profitability for GoDirect through and building as we exit to 2023.
As for the other revenue categories, interest revenue, which now solely includes revenues from Crown Power Fund, was just over CAD 500,000 in the fourth quarter, up from about CAD 300,000 last year. Fees and other income, which is comprised primarily of credit reporting services income from Lumbermen's, was CAD 424,000 versus CAD 386,000 last year. For Q4 2022, Crown's share of losses from Crown Partners Fund, which is based on IFRS based earnings reported by the fund, totaled just about CAD 680,000 versus CAD 2.8 million last year, which was earnings last year.
For the full year, we recognized a loss of CAD 4.7 million, including CAD 3 million in respect to the accrued performance bonus payable being reduced. We had CAD 1.7 million for our loss attributable to our limited partnership interest. The year-over-year decrease is primarily due to the recognition of a large provision for expected credit loss and other issues that Chris mentioned that were disclosed earlier in the year. Overall, our share of losses from Crown Partners Fund was partially offset by a resulting performance bonus recovery of CAD a million and a half dollars.
The higher provisions, combined with the previously disclosed non-cash impairment charges related to Crown Partners Fund, which we detailed in Q3 results, which Chris touched on, drove a higher net loss for 2022 of CAD 7.4 million or CAD 1.26 per basic share, compared with net income of CAD 2 million or CAD 0.23 per basic share in 2021. Total equity at year-end decreased to, by CAD 18.4 million year-on-year to CAD 50.7 million. That's a result of share repurchases totaling CAD 11 million plus the net loss to shareholders. Total equity per share decreased to CAD 8.98 from CAD 9.74 at the end of last year.
At year-end, on a consolidated basis, we had cash of $7.2 million and a little more than $18 million drawn on the corporate credit facility. As we've previously announced, subsequent to year-end, we did enter a new senior secured corporate credit facility for up to $43.5 million, including a $3.5 million dollar letter of credit facility, with Canadian Western Bank. This replaced our previous credit facility, which had a lesser capacity of $23.5 million, including $3.5 million dollar letter of credit facility. As mentioned, we'll continue to reduce the alternative lending exposure as the remaining loans in Crown Partners Fund mature and/or are repaid early.
The resulting proceeds, in addition to this new credit facility, should provide us with ample financial capacity to support organic and inorganic growth in the two main segments while managing our other capital management priorities, including with dealing with the maturity of our debentures this year. In closing, we appreciate the continued interest you have in Crown. We continue to be excited about the growth initiatives in the two main segments, which position us well for profitable growth, looking beyond 2022. We look forward to updating you on developments with our Q1 earnings. With that, operator, we will open it for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one. Should you wish to withdraw from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. Your questions will be polled in the order they are received. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Nick Corcoran from Acumen Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. A few questions from me. The first one's with Ontario Connects. It sounds like shovels will be in the ground in Q2. Is that project on track? Have you seen any impacts from inflation on it?
Hey, Nick. It is on track. I think Like before, in the previous call, we talked about just the extensive size of this. Like, to put it in perspective, again, it's close to 3,000 kilometers. It's affecting something in the magnitude of 35,000 pole attachments that's going to be made. Each pole needs to go through an engineering process and then approved by Hydro One, who's the primary pole owner. That's a process many of the ISPs are going through right now. There is not just our company doing this. Some of that, I'm just giving the context of this. Just there's a lot to get started, get moving before we can put shovels in the ground or more accurately, buckets in the air.
Yes, it is on track. I don't think we had a very clear and concise time frame when we would get started. We've broken this thing down into multi-year builds. I don't feel we've hit much slippage. Costs haven't changed much. Like there's material costs are, you know, I think we saw a big jump in last year. We're not seeing much on that or the contractor costs. We're probably still achieving our goal there.
Good. Maybe thinking of the multi-year deal you signed with Galaxy, what will the CapEx then be on that, and how should we think about the revenue build?
Yeah. CapEx is relatively light when it comes to satellite bandwidth. Like the ratio of, like just comparing to fiber, like the ratio of CapEx to service plans is very high. With fiber, it's the opposite. With satellite, the service plans are much higher than the CapEx. We're expecting maybe CAD 2 million to outfit all of the communities in Nunavut. There'll be various different sizes of gear. Like there's some, you know, Iqaluit being the largest down to then Pond Inlet being the smallest communities. Different equipment going based upon the needs of the community. It will vary, but that's order of magnitude, CAD 2 million.
Switching gears to distribution services, the costs for that were up in the quarter. Was that just a function of Calgary and Reno being online?
Yeah, for sure. We do have.
Definitely dragged from Q4, both of those. We were just, You had the facilities up, you were starting to get personnel in place and really de minimis revenues, really no particular, just didn't have any. If the accounts let us, we would just capitalize that, but they don't, so it goes through cash flow. Yeah, all those. Every facility has revenue in it today, and it continues to increase on a monthly basis as new customers are getting filled.
Thinking about that revenue, has there been any impact from a broader economic slowdown on the ramp of those warehouses, and would that pose a risk to kind of the timeline you gave in your prepared remarks?
Yeah, I haven't seen that. Like there are indications that it's a pretty hot market still. Like the vacancy rates are, for industrial and distributions are way down. There's still a capacity issue, this is largely across North America. I think this tracks back to consumer buying behavior is much more omni-channel now, so there's just a change of the type of warehouse space. Rather than existing pallet in, pallet out to support large retailers, it's very much the ability to pick, pack, ship, as well as support large retail. That's just changing the needs of warehouse providers. I'm still very impressed by the pipeline activity. We have a very full group of customers who are pursuing, you know, or we're pursuing, I should say.
It almost feels like sometimes we're being pursued, but like you open new warehouses and people are trying to find. Just give you an example, like Calgary, we opened a warehouse. What you're seeing right now is people leaving Vancouver. You open one in Reno, people leave in California. I say those because those are higher, much higher cost markets. Higher costs for the infrastructure, there's higher costs for the payroll. I think that trend is gonna continue for a while. There's a lot of distribution capacity in those two markets that are moving out.
With, more revenue going through Calgary and Reno in the first quarters, would it be reasonable to assume there'll be less of a drag on the EBITDA from distribution services?
Yeah. Less of a drag. I don't know if like Reno's probably not gonna make much of an impact in Q1. Like I think we took over that facility in November and really started filling it in January, but to a minor extent. Like just the process is you take a new customer on, and like that facility will take, say, capacity is around 7,000 pallet locations. Let's say you get a customer for 1,000 locations, they don't send it to you overnight. Like that'll take maybe two, three months to load in, and then we start fulfilling out of it. So it. There is a phasing up period. Calgary is going through that in Q1, so we're actually expecting to do a full inbound, outbound, come April.
At that point, it's generating full cash flow for us. We make some revenue out of the storage, but whether we're. For full economics, you need inbound, out. You're gonna end receiving, pick back for it to all be functioning.
Great. This is all for me, thanks a lot.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, should you have a question, please press star one. There are no further questions at this time. You may proceed.
All right. Thank you everyone. As always, please, don't hesitate to reach out to us in the meantime. Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.