Hello, and welcome to the annual meeting of shareholders of KP Tissue Inc. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. During the meeting, we'll have a question-and-answer session. You can submit questions or comments at any time by clicking on the message icon. It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to François Vimard, so the floor is yours.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the annual meeting of shareholders of KP Tissue Inc. My name is François Vimard, Chairman of KP Tissue Inc., and I will chair the business portion of today's meeting. We're glad you could join us today for our virtual AGM. We are pleased to hold this meeting through the virtual meeting platform, accessible to all shareholders regardless of physical location, to submit questions in bulk. While it is historically been our practice to hold our annual meeting in person, due to current requirements of social distancing, we felt that it would be more prudent, once again, to hold this AGM using the Lumi platform. Joining me today on this virtual meeting are Dino Bianco, Chief Executive Officer; Mark Holbrook, Chief Financial Officer; François Paroyan, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary; and Mike Baldesarra, Director, Investor Relations.
Also joining us are my other KP Tissue directors, Michel Letellier and Louise Wendling. James Hardy unfortunately could not attend today's meeting. Also joining us are the KPGP Inc. directors: Mr. Joseph Kruger II, David Angel, Gene Kruger, Sarah Kruger, and David Spraley. As indicated on the meeting agenda displayed on your screen, if you experience any technical issues during the meeting, please email tsstbgminfo@tmx.com or go to go.loomiglobal.com/kpt. All questions will be held following the formal business portion of the meeting. Shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders can submit questions anytime online by clicking the message icon at the top of the screen and typing their question in the chat box at the bottom of their messaging screen.
In an online format, we may receive questions of a similar theme, and your specific question may be grouped and summarized in the interest of efficiency and addressing as many themes as possible. I encourage you to submit the question as soon as possible so that we may address them during the question period. Before we begin, let me remind you that during the course of this meeting, we may make certain statements which contain forward-looking information. These statements reflect the corporation's current expectations regarding future events. Actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking information and depend on the number of factors or assumptions applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection in the forward-looking information.
Additional information on these factors and assumptions, including a more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing KP Tissue, appears in the Corporation's 2020 MD&A and Annual Information Form, both of which are available on SEDAR. I officially call the annual meeting to order and appoint François Paroyan to act as Secretary of the Meeting, and Julien Lavallière and Rebecca Prentice of TSX Trust Company to act as scrutineers of the meeting. Only registered shareholders who appear in their name as of April 20, 2021, the record date of this meeting, but their validly appointed proxy holders are entitled to vote at this meeting. I will now commence the formal business of the meeting. The business of the meeting is described in the Management Information Circular dated April 22, 2021, which accompanied the Notice of Meeting. I will take the Notice of Meeting as read.
We will conduct the vote on the matters before us by a poll. On a poll, each registered shareholder or their duly appointed proxy holders is entitled to vote on each matter. As a reminder, each share equals one vote. The poll will be open for all motions at the same time. This will allow you to choose to vote on each matter immediately or wait until conclusion of discussion on each matter prior to casting your vote. Votes may be changed up to the time voting is closed. Once discussion on all items of business has concluded, I will give you a minute to enter your vote and then declare voting closed on all motions. The voting results of each motion will be included in the press release that will be filed on SEDAR later today. We will run through each of the items on the agenda in turn.
I now declare the polls open on all motions. The Corporate Secretary of KP Tissue has advised me that the notice calling this meeting, together with a form of proxy for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, has been sent to each director of the corporation, the auditor of the corporation, and each intermediary and registered holder of common share of the corporation of record on April, 2021, the record date of the meeting. As indicated in the form of proxy, the corporation elected to utilize notice and access with respect to the delivery of the Management Information Circular and provide shareholders with information on how to access the Management Information Circular for this meeting online. The scrutineers have provided me with a preliminary report regarding shareholders' attendance at the meeting.
The scrutineers report that they are present at this meeting virtually or by proxy shareholders holding 3,632,707 common shares. Accordingly, the requisite quorum of shareholders is present, and the meeting is duly and properly constituted for the transaction of business. I direct that the confirmation of mailing of the Notice of Meeting received by TSX Trust Company and the scrutineers' complete report on attendance being accepted in the minutes of the meeting. The next item of business is the presentation of the Corporation Audited Consolidated Financial Statement as for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and the auditor's report thereof. These documents were mailed to the shareholders who requested them. Additional copies of these materials are also available on our company website and also on SEDAR.
I would ask the Secretary to attach a copy of the Corporation's 2020 Financial Statements and auditor's report thereof to the minutes of this meeting. Next is our first item of business for voting. We will now proceed with the election of directors until the next annual general meeting. The number of directors to be elected at the meeting is four. Four nominees were named in the Management Proxy Circular, namely myself, James Hardy, Michel Letellier, and Louise Wendling. I shall now call for the aforementioned individuals to be formally nominated for election as directors of the corporation.
Mr. Chairman, my name is Mark Holbrook, and I'm a shareholder of the corporation. I nominate the following persons for election as directors, as specified in the Management Information Circular dated April 22, 2021: François Vimard, James Hardy, Michel Letellier, and Louise Wendling.
Is there a second to the motion?
Mr. Chairman, my name is Mike Baldesarra. I am a shareholder of the corporation. I second the motion.
As no further nominations were made in accordance with the advance notice procedure set out in the Corporation bylaw, I declare the nomination closed. Unless there are any questions, we will proceed by vote for the election of directors. Having no questions, I will now call for a vote to elect the nominees. Please cast your vote for voting item one before we move on to the next item. The next item of business is the reappointment of auditors: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Accountant. The current auditors of the corporation are proposed as auditors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders. May I have a motion that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Accountant, be reappointed as auditor of the corporation until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until a successor is appointed?
I so move.
Is there a second to the motion?
I second the motion.
Unless there are any questions, we will proceed by vote for the reappointment of the auditors. Having no questions, I will now call for a vote to reappoint the auditors. To carry the motion, we need the affirmative vote of at least the majority of the vote cast by the shareholders. All members, please cast your vote now on item number two. For those of you who have not voted on all the motions, please do so now as I will shortly close the poll. The polls are now closed. Thank you all for your attention. Given that over 99% of the share entitled to vote at this meeting have already voted in favor of the election of directors, and over 99% of the share entitled to vote at this meeting have already voted in favor of the election of auditors, I declare the motion passed.
Thank you on behalf of the board to our shareholders for your support. The corporation will report the detailed results of the voting for each nominee to the board and the auditors in its report of voting results to be filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com after this meeting and by way of press release. And that wraps up the official portion of the AGM. If there is no other business to be brought before the meeting, I will ask for a motion that the meeting be concluded.
Mr. Chairman, I propose that this meeting be concluded.
Would someone second this motion?
I second the motion.
Thank you. Now it's my pleasure to invite Mr. Dino Bianco, KP Tissue Chief Executive Officer, to address the meeting on behalf of management to provide a business overview including our fiscal 2020 results.
Thank you, François. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the annual meeting of shareholders of KP Tissue. For the second consecutive year, we are holding this meeting virtually. Clearly, the pandemic has significantly changed how we do things in almost every aspect of our daily lives, and this is but one example. The good news is that we're finally seen to be headed in a positive direction, and it is my hope that we will be together next year. After my presentation, I will answer any questions that we have received online. Let's begin with slide five. The vision and mission we introduced two years ago remains the foundation of our company, and that is to be the most trusted and best-loved tissue company in North America.
The past year has clearly shown that consumers can depend on us for quality products and consistency of supply, no matter how high the demand. As you will hear when I discuss our trademarks, our share has grown in our three key categories as consumers increasingly have turned to Kruger Products for their needs. Making everyday life more comfortable is not a mere slogan for us, but has guided our actions during the uncertainty of COVID and enabled us to provide reliable supply when needed. Let's turn to slide six. We are committed to driving strong revenue, profit, and above all, shareholder value. These strategies, which we have previously introduced, have proven to be a winning formula. They include building our consumer muscle, having a winning team and culture, expanding in the U.S. and away from home, building a more efficient supply chain, and evolving our customer strategy.
Slide seven addresses our corporate highlights. 2020 was a very strong year across many metrics. Revenue grew at 11.7% to CAD 1.5 billion, while Adjusted EBITDA rose 36.4% to CAD 198 million. I'm particularly pleased to say that we quickly responded to the challenges brought on by the unprecedented crisis. I am very proud of how our people rose to these challenges. Despite the pandemic, we maintained a safe environment throughout and had no major disruptions to our business.
The difficult COVID operating environment also managed us through the TAD Sherbrooke facility startup, which started on time and on budget. The OpEx program launched two years ago resulted in cost savings beyond our annual targets and, more importantly, increased our capacity in a time of immense need. Our unified efforts and the commitment of all employees helped us ensure our success as we managed through the pandemic.
I wish to thank them for their incremental focus and determination during a year we will never forget. On the next slide, we address safety and business continuity. Our primary focus at the beginning of the pandemic was to ensure that Kruger Products' employees were safe while maintaining business continuity. We succeeded on both counts. Our pandemic response and business continuity teams and protocols made the difference.
There were no major business disruptions and no evidence of intersite virus transmission. With the contribution of our new TAD Sherbrooke facility and strong legacy asset performance, we are now in a very strong inventory position to supply the market. Since the beginning of the year, we have been able to reintroduce some SKUs that we had temporarily halted during the crux of the pandemic last year. As reported in the first quarter, we saw significant consumer tissue destocking by retailers and consumers.
As things stand now, we expect consumer demand to start stabilizing in the second quarter and return to a more normal buying behavior in the second half of the year. As we continue to manage some of the pandemic's impact, we are also fully prepared for the post-pandemic recovery. Moving forward, we want to continue to carry some of the learnings brought to our business by the pandemic, such as permanently eliminating slow-moving SKUs, building our e-commerce platform, and expanding on new distribution opportunities. Consumers know they can trust us and our brands. This is a key differentiator during periods of uncertainty, and our reward has been continued share growth and strong performance. slide nine outlines our financial performance trend over the past five years. The three bar graphs tell a very positive story. Our revenue trend has been strong and continuous.
Adjusted EBITDA and operating income began an upward trend in 2019. Strong demand across all our consumer product categories, combined with operational excellence, translated into record high adjusted EBITDA in 2020, even though away from home remained under pressure during this time. We delivered these results while continuing to invest in our future across many segments.
The next slide outlines our segment and geographic split. Canada accounts for 60% of our business, while the U.S. is 40%, and our strong consumer business results of 17.6% were driven by increased at-home tissue usage during COVID and pantry loading by the consumer. Not surprisingly, away from home decreased almost 50% as end markets were significantly impacted by the lockdowns. Slide 11 provides a summary of our first quarter results. After a year of incredible tissue demand, Q1 reflected the impact of significant inventory destocking in consumer tissue.
Despite these challenges in Q1 and the impact on sales, our EBITDA improved versus Q4 2020. Revenues declined 17.3%, while adjusted EBITDA in the quarter declined 26.5% versus a very strong prior year. Specifically, revenue came in at CAD 310 million, while adjusted EBITDA was CAD 37.5 million. Revenue declined in both Canada and the U.S. at 15.4% and 20.2%, respectively. The biggest driver of the revenue decline, as I mentioned earlier, was a North American category dload at both the customer and consumer level. This will affect most tissue companies during the first half of 2021. EBITDA was not only affected by lower sales volume, but also by higher pulp prices, as well as by increased freight and warehousing costs. This was partially offset by lower SG&A expenses.
Regarding our outlook, with the volatility of the COVID-19 recovery and the impact on sales and away from home and consumer, and we're also seeing significantly higher pulp prices, we anticipate our Q2 2021 Adjusted EBITDA to be in line with Q1 2021 results. As we move into the second half of 2021, we do expect that more favorable market conditions, combined with pricing actions, will translate into improved performance. Let me update our TAD Sherbrooke project on slide 12. The construction, you may recall, began just over two years ago. In fact, we announced it in August of 2018. My main message here is that the startup of what is by far the largest project that we have undertaken was on time and on budget, despite COVID and the additional COVID protocols that we put in place.
In addition to being on time and on budget, we have also been very successful in our ramp-up curve during the first quarter of this year, as we are exceeding our internal metrics on both paper production and conversion. These benefits began flowing to the P&L in Q1 and will make their way through the P&L as we move through the year. The paper machine and converting line startups continue to track ahead of the projected curve, and I must congratulate our team, which has done an amazing job getting our new facility up and running. At maturity, this site will increase our capacity by approximately 15% for the North American market, allowing us to increase our presence in the premium tissue segment. One of the first products being commercialized is our new SpongeTowels UltraPRO.
This is on the shelves now at most Canadian retailers and is by far one of the best tissue products we have been able to produce. To further support our long-term growth strategy, we also announced an additional $240 million investment in Sherbrooke. It calls for the addition of a bathroom tissue converting line at the existing facility, as well as the construction of a new facility to house a new tissue paper machine and a facial tissue converting line. Construction will start in the summer of 2022, with the paper machine expected to be up and running in 2024. The project is non-dilutive for shareholders and is debt financed. At maturity, the annual tissue output will exceed 30,000 metric tons. With this new investment, Sherbrooke will become a major tissue production hub that will work with our existing facilities to serve our North American markets.
On slide 13, our operational excellence improvement plan is outlined in more detail. This was initiated at the beginning of 2019. It encompasses five key pillars, which consist of: one, environment; two, health and safety; three, asset care and progressive maintenance; four, end-to-end quality; and five, strategic deployment initiatives and management. We completed the initial two-year phase of our OpEx program ahead of our annual cost savings targets. The program also made it possible to drive more capacity and asset reliability. This was instrumental in helping us to more effectively address the strong market demand and volatility that was caused by the pandemic. This year's focus and our future focus is to expand to additional assets in our network and to focus on reducing waste.
Among its longer-term benefits and most important aspects is it's fostering a cultural shift with a higher level of employee engagement and empowerment to drive operational excellence across our entire network. On slides 14 and 15, I will review our trademark business. The focus remains on investing and building our brands. We are the clear leader in Canadian tissue, and we are expanding in North America. In the past year, we have made strong share gains, as shown here. In the bathroom tissue category, we are the recognized Canadian market leader with a 37.1% market share, up 3.3 points from last year. And with a market share of 33% in the facial tissue category, which is up 2.1 points, we are also number one with our Scotties brand.
In paper towels, SpongeTowels is a 22.2% share, up 1.7 points from the prior year, and this gives us a strong number two position with strong growth potential and momentum driven primarily through our TAD Sherbrooke facility. As planned, there will be continued incremental marketing investment throughout 2021. Our Unapologetically Human Unleash the Scotties and Absorb Life, all of that media campaigns, employing purpose-driven messaging was a bold move and has been a huge success with consumers from coast to coast.
Pushing even further, the unapologetically human campaign was multi-brand and fully adapted in five languages. We are strong believers in the power of multicultural marketing, which allows our brands to better resonate emotionally with evolving Canadian consumer demographics. Also, at this time of year, as Canadians, our passion for hockey intensifies. Unless you are a Leaf fan like me.
Our close NHL partnership continues with the activation of our Find the Cup to Win Stanley Cup playoff promotion and the Kruger Big Assist. On the innovation side, there have been full distribution of quality-improved Cashmere supported by strong advertising and, as mentioned earlier, the launch of our new SpongeTowels UltraPRO paper towel. We've had some of the best recognized and loved brands in Canada for more than a decade, and our focus remains on further building our brands to even stronger and more respected positions. Slide 16 portrays the number of key partnerships that we have put in place over the years to further support our brand. There is no doubt that our success reflects continued investment with strong and long-standing collaborations with well-recognized partners such as the NHL, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, just to name a few.
Moving now to the away from home segment, or AFH, on slide 17. Kruger Products is the Canadian leader in this segment with a market share of approximately 30%, and it accounted for approximately 14% of our total revenue in 2020. AFH sells commercial tissue products primarily through distributors to businesses involved in property management, healthcare, education, food service, lodging, and other public facilities, many of which have been seriously impacted by COVID. Away from home had a relatively good start in early 2021, supported by solid orders and crossover opportunities in the consumer segment. Results for the balance of 2020 were soft, driven by COVID restrictions across North America. So to repeat, we had a good start in 2020 on AFH in the first quarter, but we saw the business continue to decline throughout the year as many of the end markets began to close.
As we look at 2021, volumes are beginning to improve, but we're still about 25% below pre-pandemic levels as we report in our Q1 results. We are now seeing encouraging trends in the U.S., and Canada should follow soon as provincial restrictions are gradually lifted. Our AFH network is operation improved and recovery ready as we anticipate growth in the upcoming quarters tied to end market recoveries in this segment. The next slide, slide 18, refers to the many employee and corporate responsibility awards. Year- after- year, upholding our status as a model corporate citizen for our employees, the community, the environment, our suppliers, and our shareholders is a priority for us. We continue to invest to build our culture and have been recognized for our efforts. While these awards are a testament to our accomplishments, we are continually looking to ways to be better.
Slide 19 and 20, I want to review our sustainability program, which is really part of the purpose of our company. In 2010, we launched our initial five-year sustainable development program. This was followed by a second five-year plan in 2016. This slide reviews some of our sustainability efforts and lays out our 2020 targets and results. As you can see, we've done quite well delivering on most of our main objectives: improving employee health and safety, reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and water consumption. Our efforts balance the three P's of people, planet, and profit. As we look forward, we recently launched our Reimagine 2030 sustainability platform, which sets out ambitious long-term goals. The program is designed to make Kruger Products a leader in sustainability and transform our culture as we focus on being better environmental stewards in everything we do.
We have identified four pillars of action: Products Empower, Planet Positive, Employee Impact, and Community Embrace, each with well-defined targets that we fully expect to meet. Also, recently, we announced that we became a signatory of the Canada Plastics Pact, or CPP, making us the first tissue company to do so. The CPP is an initiative that brings together partners united behind the vision of creating in Canada a circular economy that keeps plastic waste in the economy and out of the environment. One of the targets of Reimagine 2030 is to reduce virgin plastic in trademark packaging by 50%. As a Canadian leader, we have a responsibility and duty to be part of the solution for upcoming generations. Concluding my remarks on slide 21, let me summarize how we are consistently reinvesting to build a strong future.
As indicated, we will continue to invest in our strong brands for the long term to build market share in Canada and expand White Cloud in the U.S. We have implemented pricing in Canada to counter the exceptional rise in pulp prices, and we should start to see the benefit of that in the second half of the year. The ramp-up of our new TAD Sherbrooke facility is progressing very well, giving us state-of-the-art tissue capacity to grow the ultra-premium segment, specifically with our new SpongeTowels UltraPRO product. The OpEx and Sherbrooke expansion project will further increase capacity and optimize our cost structure. We completed our plan to prepare away-from-home for a recovery in its end-user markets and are confident that we will start to see results in the back half of the year. Our Reimagine 2030 commitment will drive transformative growth and sustainable innovation.
And lastly, we continue to develop our organizational capability and culture to drive growth. As I conclude, I again want to thank our incredible employees for their heroic efforts during 2020. Our success is a testament to their focus on the customer, consumer, and community in a time of need. Their daily efforts have ensured a reliable source of much-needed and desired quality tissue products. To each and every one of you across North America, I thank you. My gratitude is well to the members of our board for their consistent and valuable advice and guidance.
Thank you as well to our legions of consumers, customers, and suppliers for making us the clear company of choice in tissue. And to our shareholders, thank you for your confidence in our company as we drive long-term enterprise value while being a good corporate citizen. I fully expect that next year we will see each other face to face. In the meantime, please stay safe and thank you for being with us today. I'll now turn the meeting back over to François.
Thank you, Dino. We will now entertain questions from our shareholders. Again, if you are a shareholder or proxy holder and have questions, please feel free to submit your questions online. Dino, our first question is, what did you learn during the pandemic that you will carry forward after the pandemic?
Thank you, François. I mean, that's a great question. I get asked parts of it all the time. There's often a saying that says a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. In other words, there's lots to learn during a crisis because it forces you to think differently about your business. One thing I would say, though, just before I answer the question, is to twist it a little bit in that we were doing a lot of great things coming into the pandemic. We were already starting to ramp up our brand support and moving in the direction of where our brands were going. We were building strong customer relationships. We were winning awards with our customers in terms of being one of the best suppliers. We had implemented the OpEx program ahead of time in 2019.
We began our purpose and obviously our focus on sustainability long before then. So I guess the point is we were already moving in many areas prior to the pandemic, and it certainly helped us get through the pandemic. But to specifically answer the question, probably the most important thing I learned personally going through this is that toilet paper is the most important product in the world. And I say that jokingly, but I think I also say with a great sense of reality, as many of you saw the attention and focus in news media pick up on what were short-term shortfalls on tissue. And I think it made everybody, our consumers, our customers, and our employees realize how important a product we supply. It's not something people think about every day, but when it's not there, you think about it a lot.
It gave us a whole new way of thinking about our purpose and what we need to do as a company. I would also say things like SKU decomplexity. Like many companies want to produce as many different variations of products to meet consumer need and customer need, and we were doing that. There was a realization during the pandemic that some of our SKUs are short runs or complex to run, and we needed our assets to run as much capacity as possible. We reduced the number of SKUs available. If you look at it from an index point of view, pre-pandemic, if 100% was the number pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, we got down to 50% of our SKUs. We will introduce about 25 of those back. We will be at 75% permanently where we were pre-pandemic.
It allowed us to look at some of these SKUs and maybe refocus the attention on other faster-moving SKUs and free up our assets to produce more. The second area that's been a phenomenon, not just for our business, but for many, is just the rapid rise of e-commerce. What has already been a glowing platform really went into overdrive and continues to be there because of the pandemic, specifically in tissue. It depends on the numbers you look at, but it at least doubled, in fact, in many cases, probably tripled the amount of volume of tissue going through e-com. This is likely something that's going to continue, maybe not at the same pace, same growth pace, but people are now comfortable with ordering products online. They're comfortable with the delivery mechanism.
The supply chains have responded and delivered where you can go online today and order something, and it'll be at your door tomorrow. So we continue to see e-commerce as a great growth opportunity for us and for our customers and making sure that we are a leader in that area. The third area is just we're all experiencing is the work from home and the ability to be flexible in how we need to connect with our employees, whether they be in a manufacturing facility or a sales office or in headquarters. So enabling technologies for us to do that. The last piece is probably the way that we have defined our brands. The consumers were in a different state of mind during the pandemic.
Some of the social issues that were going on and the focus on being inclusive and diverse and focused on equity, more digital, more social, giving back to communities, all these sorts of things that we were already on the journey to got amplified during the mindset of the consumer during the pandemic. And then last but not least, to answer this question is just really having a purpose and sticking with your purpose.
There was a lot of times during the pandemic when we were faced with questions as a leadership team that we weren't sure how to we'd never seen that challenge before, but we stuck to our values. We stuck to our purpose and made sure that we made the right direction for the long term. That's a long-winded answer, but I took the opportunity during that answer to just talk about some of the things that we were dealing with and what will continue to make us a strong company as we look forward.
Thanks, Dino, for that answer. Next question. Why did you decide to move to a bolder media campaign?
That's a great question. And again, we were already moving in that direction. I think the pandemic made us all relook at how we talk to our consumers, what state of mind they're in. It actually provided clarity for us on where we needed to go given the consumer mindset that was amplified because of the instances that occurred from a pandemic to social justice issues that happened last year. Most advertising in the tissue category, the advertisers seem to hide from the fact that they are tissue companies. We serve a purpose. We know what that purpose is, and we don't want to hide from it. It is part of being human. It's part of everyday life, and sometimes it's messy and ugly, but that's what we do. And a lot of the advertising in tissue is around sterile environments and just planned or scripted situations.
They were always talking about a functional benefit. This is softer. This is stronger. This can deliver against the ache test or the finger poke test and all these manufactured ways of describing tissue. In many cases, I think they were insulting to the consumer. We said, "Look, we know the business we're in, and we know the comfort that tissue provides." In a small way, we're not in technology. We're not in pharma, but in a small way, we recognize the comfort that you get from our products every single day, 15-20x a day. We wanted to be real. We wanted to be authentic. We wanted to be transparent. That naturally led to the campaigns that you saw. Great campaigns really demonstrating our brands in a real way, talking to consumers in a real way, not in an insulting way.
It is being recognized in the marketplace for shaking up the category. The number of letters and thank you notes and congratulations that we have received, not just across Canada, across the globe, and the awards that we're winning is just a validation of the journey that we are on. With that, I want to thank our new CMO, Susan Irving, coming on board to really spearheading this and really the entire marketing team and our HC&l and our partners for the courage that they demonstrated to help push us in this direction.
Thank you, Dino. Mr. Chairman, there are no further questions. I'll turn it over to you.
Thanks, François. So thank you all for joining us today. Stay safe and be well.