Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to welcome you to Winpak's annual meeting of shareholders. My name is Martti Aarnio-Wihuri, Vice Chairman of the Board and your Chairman for today's meeting. I'd like to begin by introducing the head table: Antti Aarnio-Wihuri, Chairman of the Board, Olivier Muggli, President and CEO, and Mandy Meyer, Board Secretary. As this meeting is being held in person and via live webcast, we think it's necessary to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. Questions in respect of a motion can be asked by any registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holder in the room by raising your hand and submitted online by using the Q&A icon on the right of your screen. Please note there may be a slight delay in the publication of the communications received online. Questions will appear shortly after they are submitted.
General questions will only be addressed during the question-and-answer period at the end of the meeting. Questions regarding procedural matters or directly related to the motions received before the meeting will be addressed during the meeting. For the meeting today, voting on all matters will be conducted by paper ballot in the room or by electronic ballot via the webcast. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have not yet voted will be asked to vote on each business item after it has been presented.
For the shareholders in the room, please complete your paper ballots, and for those online, register your votes by selecting the For or Against buttons next to the name of each proposed director, For or Withhold next to the resolution concerning the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's auditor, and For or Against for the resolution to accept the company's approach to executive compensation. For shareholders in the room, please raise your hand once your paper ballot is complete, and Elisa Rojo will be by to collect them. Once the electronic balloting closes, the voting page will disappear and your votes will be automatically submitted. The polls will be open until all motions for matters to be considered at the meeting have been made and seconded. We will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting.
To expedite the formal part of the meeting, I will move and second all motions. I now ask that the annual meeting of shareholders of the company come to order. I appoint Mandy Meyer, a Secretary of the Meeting, and Scott Taylor and Mathew Wilms as online moderators for the webcast. For today's meeting, I appoint Elisa Rojo, Computershare Investor Services through its representatives, as scrutineer to compute the votes of any polls taken at this meeting and to report thereon to the Chairman. I will now take a moment to ask that the balloting be opened online to registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders. The online polls are now open.
At this point, all registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have properly logged in with their control numbers and wish to vote will be able to see on the screen all motions being brought forth at this meeting. The purposes of today's meeting are set out in the Notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the Company dated February 23rd, 2024. The Notice of the Meeting, the Management Proxy Circular, and the Form of Proxy were mailed to shareholders on March 26th, 2024. The audited financial, sorry, the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the fiscal period ended December 31st, 2023, and related management discussion and analysis to shareholders of the company who requested such statements and related management discussion and analysis were mailed on March 4th, 2024. A copy of confirmation of mailing is being filed with the minutes of this meeting.
Copies of the Management Proxy Circular and other meeting materials are available under the company's profile on the SEDAR+ website, as well as on the Winpak website. In addition, for attendees in the room, hard copies are available at the registration table. I've been advised by Elisa Rojo, today's scrutineer, that there are voting shares representing more than 51% of all outstanding voting shares of the company present, and therefore a quorum of shareholders of the company is present and the meeting is properly called and duly constituted for the transaction of business. I received the scrutineer's report, and I direct that their formal report be annexed to the minutes of the meeting as a schedule. I would ask that the scrutineer compile their report regarding the results of today's voting on all business matters.
As the first item of business on the agenda for today's meeting, I now present to the meeting the audited financial statements of the company as of and for the fiscal period that ended December 31st, 2023, together with the auditor's report to the shareholders thereon. Copies of such documents were mailed to shareholders who requested such statements, and it is not proposed to read them to the meeting. The next order of business is the election of directors. The bylaws of the company provide that at each annual meeting, the shareholder shall elect directors to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed. At this meeting, there are seven directors to be elected: Antti H. Aarnio-Wihuri, Martti H. Aarnio-Wihuri, Raquel J. Aarnio-Wihuri, Bruce J. Berry, Kenneth P.
Kuchma, Dayna Spiring, and Minna Yrjönmäki have been nominated as directors for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed. Each of the nominated individuals has confirmed that they are prepared to serve as director. At this time, I ask if there are any questions or discussion on this motion in the room. Miss Secretary, have any questions been received on this motion through the online webcast?
Mr. Chairman, no questions have been received.
Thank you. If there are no questions, I move and second the motion that the nominations be closed and the directors elected for the ensuing year until their or until their successors are elected or appointed. The next item of business is the appointment of the company's auditor for the ensuing year. The Board of Directors approved the appointment of KPMG LLP, subject to shareholder approval. I move and second that KPMG LLP is appointed as auditor of the company until the next annual meeting of shareholders. You've heard the motion. Is there any discussion on this matter? The last item of business is to consider and approve an advisory resolution to accept the company's approach to executive compensation. Before I bring forward a motion on the resolution, I'd like to say a few words. Winpak continues to be committed to enhancing its corporate governance practices.
One of the many ways to satisfy that objective is to seek input from our shareholders on important issues. One of those issues is executive compensation, and we are asking you today whether you are satisfied by our current approach. Although the resolution, if passed, is advisory only, it will provide the board with valuable feedback in terms of moving forward on this particularly important subject. If there are no concerns with the company's approach to executive compensation, I move and second the advisory resolution to accept the company's approach to executive compensation. Are there any questions on this motion in the room? Miss Secretary, have any questions been received on this motion through the online webcast?
No questions have been received online, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you. As all motions for matters to be considered during the meeting have been made and seconded, we will now give registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders approximately 15 more seconds to complete the electronic ballots. The voting page will disappear, and your votes will automatically be submitted. Anyone in the room with ballots that have not yet been collected, please raise your hand, and Elisa will be by to collect them. Based on early voting results or resolutions that passed, a report with the results will be posted on our website and SEDAR+ under the company profile in due course. The formal items of business as set out in the Notice of the Meeting have now been dealt with.
I would like to call on our President and CEO, Olivier Muggli, to provide us with information about your company and comment on the year that's just been completed. Mr. Muggli, please.
Waiting for the slides. Okay. I also would like to welcome you to Winpak's 38th annual shareholders' meeting, our first in-person and also live stream. So today I will review our 2023 results and the company's performance during the first quarter of 2024. I will also give you some insights into Winpak's future. Winpak's growth in 2022 was a record high, and in 2023, Q1 started on a high note. Yet we recognize that some of this growth contributed to the accumulation of inventory at some clients as a remnant of the logistics and supply chain uncertainties that plagued 2022. Starting Q2 of 2023, we observed significant destocking as activities more or less resumed to pre-pandemic levels and as lead times for raw materials and supplies came back to more normal levels.
The combination of destocking, increased costs, significant inflation, disinflation depressing disposable income, absence of market volume dynamics, negative volume growth in grocery markets have impacted our volumes as well. Input costs have softened and stabilized through 2023, mostly because of low volumes throughout the industry providing relief from the relentless pressure to increase prices and have allowed to improve margin. Certain statements made here contain forward-looking statements, and while these represent the company's expectations and beliefs, they contain risks and assumptions, and caution should hence prevail when relying upon such statements. Let's review the 2023 results. We're coming out of two successive years of double-digit growth in our modified atmosphere and vacuum packaging and a more modest 4% growth in general flexibles, and the start of 2023 was strong.
Eventually, starting in Q2, we saw a gradual volume contraction, slightly below 3% due to destocking, as mentioned earlier, and then high inflation affecting purchasing power. Revenues receded by 3.4% from the lower volume I just mentioned, and lower prices due to lower input costs. It is also to be noted that a more commoditized part of our product portfolio was affected by volume contractions. As a counter to the soft volume trend, significant volume growth was generated by the specialized printing group focusing on the healthcare packaging space. The packaging machinery volumes were surprisingly strong in 2023. It is also worth noting that because of their outstanding performances, our star products in modified atmosphere and vacuum packaging remain strong, and we are anxiously awaiting the additional capacity from the Winnipeg expansion that I will outline later.
The selling price mix was unfavorable was unfavorably impacted by indexing lower inputs cost to client, and foreign exchange rate had a small positive impact on revenue. Geographically, 79% of Winpak's revenue is realized in the United States, while 40% are coming from Canada. Export sales outside of Canada and the U.S. represent 7% of the total volume. Winpak's current structure is made up of three distinct product groups. Three flexible packaging plants in Winnipeg, one in the Atlanta region and one in Querétaro, Mexico, and the specialty printing packaging site acquired in 2019 account for 53% of the corporate sales. Rigid and lidding facilities located in Toronto, Montreal, and Illinois, two in the Chicago area, and in Mexico contribute to 44% of total sales. The newly relocated packaging machinery business based in the Los Angeles area is responsible for 3%.
Winpak now occupies 2.44 million sq ft of production space and employs over 2,700 people. Net income attributable to equity holders of the company eclipsed last year's, reaching CAD 148.1 million, an increase of 15.3%. This new all-time high record stems from strong growth margin and operational cost improvement, as well as Forex. Despite lower volumes in the commoditized flexibles and rigid packaging markets due to overstocking, overall, the high-performance, more sophisticated product range performed well, so much so that margin could be improved in 2023, helped, of course, by softened input costs. On a per-share basis, the year-over-year impact was a positive CAD 0.31 or 15.7%. Overall, despite a slight volume contraction, construction here in Winnipeg, I guess, the very strong margin recovery, favorable operational costs, and foreign exchange propelled net earnings per share to record high levels.
Income tax rate had a modest $0.015 positive impact. EBITDA and EBITDA margin evolution. In 2023, the company's EBITDA reached a record high of $228.5 million, an increase of 3.8% or the equivalent of 20% of revenue. This represents a compounded annual growth rate of 5.7% since 2013. So the recap for the results in 2023 before moving into 2024: revenue decreased by 3.4% to $1.141 billion, driven by destocking but also slowing consumption from high inflation, high interest rates, resulting in lower disposable income. For years, in fact, the grocery food market has been flat at best and receded volume-wise last year. EBITDA was positively affected by 3.9%, mostly driven by margin recovery from soft input cost, albeit passed through to some degree, while operational expenses were positively affected by lower transportation and distribution cost, as well as foreign exchange gains.
We reached again, an EBITDA to sales ratio of 20%. Let's now review the first quarter of 2024. Revenue in the first quarter of 2024 receded by 9.1% compared to the same period of 2023, mostly due to lower volumes and lower input costs passed through to clients and price pressure from large clients themselves terribly hurt financially by low consumption. However, on a volume basis, once adjusted for one less week in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 2023, Q1 volumes were essentially at the same level as the strong Q1 2023, with volume growth of 2% in flexibles and, again, double-digit growth in the specialty printing business. As a result, the lower revenue passed through to clients, the first quarter earnings retreated 8.3% to CAD 0.55 per share compared to the same period last year.
Despite the effect of lower sales volume, higher costs, notably for the new ERP project, gross profit margin improved by 8% in the first quarter, surpassing the 30% mark. The 8.3% EPS decrease can be categorized in negative volume impact, as I mentioned earlier, higher operational cost from the ERP project, and higher personal cost, while gross margin improved significantly from soft or declining input cost. Foreign exchange had a slightly negative effect as well. Raw material prices and the Canadian-to-U.S. exchange rate will continue to have an impact on Winpak's overall performance. This graph highlights the price evolution of Winpak's eight most important raw materials and the U.S. dollar between 2017 and the first quarter of 2024. A weak Canadian dollar and lower raw material prices are good for Winpak's bottom line. 2023 started with high input costs gradually declining through the course of the year.
The Canadian dollar, on the other hand, kept declining since its peak in 2021, plateauing at a lower level in 2023, and in both cases, we saw a pickup in the first quarter of 2024. While Forex is highly unpredictable, Winpak expects raw materials costs to remain more or less flat from now on during the course of 2024, pending remarkable weather events, for instance, such as a hurricane season or other force majeure events that may affect resin prices. But, of course, all of that is highly unpredictable. Let's review capital projects. Over the past decade, Winpak invested $572 million in capital projects, on average 6.2% of revenue, which is a rather unique situation in our industry. Going forward, we expect our investments to increase significantly and stay above the $100 million mark for the next two years. So let's review some of these current capital projects.
But first, before we do that, let's examine the rationale for what we do and the current and what's clearly outlining our future investments. Our business is to extend the shelf life of food and healthcare products with the minimum environmental footprint and, as such, to provide the best packaging solutions for people and planet. We are producing primary packaging and, for the vast majority, in high barrier, in other words, providing high level of protection to packaged goods. We're striving to provide and further develop the highest level in attributes of protection, information, logistics, processing, while being the most affordable packaging products. Today, there isn't a more optimized type packaging, not from a cost standpoint and, more importantly, not from a sustainability or environmental footprint.
Having said that, our clients and their brands are in the crosshairs of public opinion and being responsible for the damage to the environment, the pollution of land and oceans. They, in turn, seek new and improved solutions to reduce their impact and, eventually, our overall impact on the environment and eventually achieve carbon neutrality or they announce environmental targets. This is a fantastic opportunity for Winpak. With our advanced production infrastructure, second-to-none investments in material sciences, we are uniquely positioned to lead the way sustainable product introductions. We have been filing with the Carbon Disclosure Protocol since 2017 and have gradually been able to improve our score despite CDP increasing the threshold level year over year. In 2023, we reached a score of A-minus, the same as the year before, but, again, at the higher threshold levels.
The average for plastics industry is a C, and our A-minus score places us worldwide in the top 18% from thousands of companies filing with CDP. For 2023, we had our Scope 1 and 2 audited by an independent party, and we will do the same for our next filing for Scope 3, and this is one of the prerequisites to be able to reach a higher score within CDP. In addition, we have filed our application, which has been approved for the so-called Science-Based Target Initiative, or SBTi, which intends to put measures in place to reduce carbon emission to meet the Paris COP agreement, keeping global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. So what are we doing to reduce our carbon intensity?
Winpak has introduced a record number of standard-setting products, all recycle-ready and recyclable, and, as mentioned earlier, the board of Winpak has approved investments to produce these advanced materials in the most cost-effective manner. We're focusing on the following areas: circular economy with the use of post-consumer recycled material, PCR. Recyclable solution. Recycle-ready solutions, these are the ones that have all the monomaterials attributes to be recyclable but may not be recycled everywhere because of missing infrastructure. And also on renewable content such as paper, starch, PHAs, and PHBs. As an example of such packaging solutions made out of renewable materials, we've introduced EcoWrap, a paper-based foam wrap for food and non-food products that is 100% curbside recyclable and with a paper waste stream.
And, by the way, a lot of these solutions are exposed at the back of the room for after the meeting, and you will be able to witness these and look at them. In general, of course, we continue to put a lot of effort, even with sustainable solutions, to downgage, source reduce our products. It's good for cost, and, of course, it's good for carbon footprint as well. So that sounds like a lot of R&D and material sciences, and it's true, but it also means significant equipment investments and also some site expansions. In the existing footprint in the green box here in Winnipeg, that's the current site. Here, we just added a triplex laminator, a new flexo press, which is now commercial, and we're adding another one this summer.
The construction of the addition of 200,000 210,000, excuse me, sq ft, that's the red box in the picture, is well underway, and we'll provide a home for a fifth cast extrusion line for reform products and a brand new R&D laboratory and client demonstration center. This investment amounts to over $100 million over this and next year. Beyond the expansion is also earmarked to house our first Eco-Foam line, which will be a large-scale thermoplastic starch line for high-barrier semi-rigid packaging from renewable resources, expected to be carbon neutral. The construction of the 210,000 sq ft expansion is well underway, with the steel structure being erected as we speak.
The timeline is managed well, and the clement weather in the winter allowed to catch up on some early delays from local permit, authority local permit delivery from authorities, and the project is now on time and on cost, and the expectation is to have the first cast line , we call it MultiBarrier V, start up mid-2025. This line will be another record output line in North America and incorporate new to Winpak and new to the industry technology, focused on high-performance, high-barrier films for modified atmosphere vacuum packaging, with the latest in attributes for recyclability, zero waste, and high performance on our customers' line, and then best performance-to-cost ratio. Needless to say that we're very excited by the new technology, and we'll have a test bench with a re-engineered, smaller-scale line incorporating this new technology later this year.
This is the fourth extrusion coating line that is currently being assembled within the existing site. It is another line of superlatives incorporating learnings from the 2021-installed latest line, but with higher speed, higher width, and higher output. The line of WinCoater products is one where Winpak stands out from a performance-to-cost standpoint, including for the new recycle-ready versions. The new flexographic printing press on the left is now commercial, and another one, like the one on the right, will be taken commercial by this summer. Winpak Division in Winnipeg, together with Winpak Films in Georgia, are the location focusing on recycle-ready flexible high-barrier solutions, whether for thermoformable modified atmosphere packaging, pouch-type applications of all kinds, whether with zippers or with spouts and caps. Most of these solutions have already obtained the How2Recycle approval, and there's more to come.
As you can imagine, such as, for instance, the new retort structure, which will be based on the new extrusion technology, and we're very excited about having that new capability. We hope to be able to commercialize it before the end of the year with, as I mentioned, the newly re-engineered line and later on with the new large MultiBarrier V line in the new expansion. Eco-Foam is another significant game changer with the introduction of thermoplastic starch-based high-barrier semi-rigid containers. This renewable solution is based upon starch that is a byproduct of potato processing or from the extraction of protein from peas to produce vegan meat replacement, both of which are produced and available here in Manitoba, and will be processed into high-barrier packaging material with the use of hydroenergy, in other words, clean energy. We expect this packaging solution to be carbon neutral, home compostable, or biodegradable.
We expect the second line in the new expansion, so one is this MultiBarrier V. We expect this second line in the expansion to be our first high-volume EcoFoam production line, which will be another landmark in the industry. Also in Winnipeg, in the blue box on the top right, is the site of the biaxially oriented polyamide line known as BOPA III installation, part of American Biaxis. This is the largest line of its kind and the most sophisticated, technologically speaking, and we're nearing its commercialization. Applications range today from event balloons to high-barrier packaging for highly perishable foods, pharmaceutical products, aseptic or retort pouches, where the puncture and heat resistance of polyamide are irreplaceable. Very thin and co-extruded structures are intended to help achieve high-performance packaging yet maintain recyclability.
We are also expecting the new generation of BOPA film to find applications in new high-tech devices such as lithium polymer battery and some hard-to-hold pharmaceutical products. At Winpak Lane, our machinery business division, the business is growing rapidly, and a new larger facility for design and assembly of equipment was needed, and, of course, keeping in mind that Winpak Lane is also a conduit for our system sales approach of machinery and consumer consumable sales. It's been a very exciting time at Winpak Lane, not only since the new manufacturing site has vastly improved lead time and cut dramatically lead time, excuse me, for all product platforms, but Winpak Lane has also re-engineered all three of its major platforms towards higher performance, higher output, and taken costs out at the same time.
The new Titan cup filling line with up to 1,200 cups per minute is a new benchmark in the industry. The W-18 sachet workhorse has been redesigned in the Phoenix generation, again high output, latest electronics and HMI improvements, and the same can be said for the larger pouch-sized equipment W-25 line into the so-called Genesis new models. Expansion ambitions at Winpak HeatSeal. Winpak HeatSeal is envisioning expanding the site with a 90,000 sq ft expansion to house another high-performance converting line, new standard-setting equipment to expand its portfolio of products, and at the same time take costs out. One of the strategic developments at Winpak HeatSeal is expanding our healthcare market, and for that we need additional capacity to produce the base materials, which in part are then printed with the Windspeed Service model of Winpak Control Group, our specialty printing unit.
Either high-tech converting developments entail lithium battery pouch laminate, for which key components such as the BOPA film I mentioned earlier can be provided by American Biaxis in Winnipeg, the specialized sealants from either Winpak Division in Winnipeg or Winpak Films in Georgia, so this is, again, another unique material science capability of Winpak. Furthermore, Winpak HeatSeal is pioneering a new generation of recycle-ready monomaterial die-cut lidding that enables the cup and the lid to be recycled together and ways to keep the two, cup and lid, together and avoid that the lid gets lost in material recovery facilities, the so-called MRFs. Both polypropylene and high-density polyethylene solutions are being offered. I mentioned earlier a couple of times the fast-paced double-digit volume growth at Winpak Control Group, our specialty printing unit, focusing on the healthcare market.
As we need to expand the print capacity of this business to onboard the many new business opportunities provided by the Windspeed Service model and by the unique print and converting abilities of Winpak Control Group, we were able to secure a larger site within a few miles from the current site we will be able to access by 2025. We're preparing an investment request for the board for additional print capacity, and we'll use the opportunity granted by the new site to optimize production flow and layout for higher productivity. Winpak Control Group specializes in quick turnaround, short run, as well as on inserts, outserts, healthcare printing, as well as on nutraceuticals. The unique 100% inspection system capability and agility of the business offers a unique value proposition while getting the base material from the larger Winpak production sites, whether from Montreal or from Winnipeg, as a backwards integration.
This is a top view of the 615,000 sq ft Sauk Village in Illinois and the flagship of our Winpak Portion Packaging 3 sites. Besides producing a wide range of so-called custom thermoforming packaging applications ranging from hot beverages, high-barrier snacks, retort human food, wet pet food, and a wide variety of stock condiments, dessert, applesauce, cups, and MAPFRESH modified atmosphere packaging meat trays, we've gradually transformed our assets from processing polystyrene-based containers toward recyclable polypropylene ones, and we took another major step forward with the last large polystyrene line that was dedicated to hot beverage packaging, now being re-engineered to produce recyclable thermoformed polypropylene containers. In parallel, a new center for in-mold label injection molding has been built. We have successfully introduced our first series of IML, in-mold label, containers in the dairy market and are busy expanding towards another format to be commercialized before the year is over.
The investment is creating a lot of new dynamic in the market, and we're working on securing additional significant pieces of business as we speak. Furthermore, we're also investing in injection molding for high-barrier co-injected parts for a variety of new packaging concepts, which we'll see in the next slides. But we're also adding a new high-output barrier sheet and inline highly automated trim-in-place thermoforming line in our South Chicago Heights site. I only have a technical drawing at this point, so no picture yet, but for our next meeting, such additional capacity will be shown, and it's needed to continue expanding into our recyclable range of containers. Back to the new injection molding technology and back to new Winpak and new-to-the-world packaging formats.
FlexPod and SqueezePod, of which the entire family is illustrated here, and you'll be able to see them at the back, which stem from the combination of rigid packaging attributes but made from flexible materials. That way, there is a significant source reduction of up to 65% for new and improved functionalities, all with the entirely recyclable materials. And because of their so-called rigid nature, they have a high likelihood of being identified as such and sorted for recycling at a material recovery facility. So these products respond to the highest demands from a recyclability standpoint while at the same time very significantly reducing the carbon footprint of the packaging solutions they replace.
This is creating quite a stir and excitement, with many existing but also entirely new customers of Winpak, but also with our colleagues at Wipak for the European market, which we know is more advanced from a sustainability standpoint. We also have a FlexPod version that is entirely renewable and home compostable. Another game-changing new product to enhance our family of recyclable high-barrier spouted pouches is the introduction of our new spill-resistant and high-barrier spout and cap. As an industry, we're putting tremendous efforts in providing a pouch body with barrier attributes, but so far we've accepted a spout and cap without barrier. It is like putting a lot of effort in insulating a home from heat or cold but leaving the front door open at all times. So no more.
The new spout and cap design offers not only spill resistance, high barrier, recyclability. It is also one of the lightest weight for source reduction, and its novel anti-choke design allows for minimal space and weight. Winpak's proprietary and patent-pending design is also conducive to keep the cap attached to the spout and the remainder of the pouch for recyclability. The following three slides contain further financial details and forward-looking statements for the company, and they are available for reading on our website. This presentation, as well as detailed financial disclosures, are available from Winpak's website at www.winpak.com. And with this, Mr. Chairman, I'm coming to the end of my presentation, and thank you for attending Winpak's annual meeting of shareholders. Back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Olivier. I now open the meeting to questions from registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holders.
Please limit your questions to topics relating to today's subject matter and keep your questions short and to the point. I ask that any attendees in the room who would like to ask a question, please raise their hands, and a microphone will be brought to you. Those participating via the live webcast who would like to ask a question, please use the instant messaging feature of the virtual interface to do so. We will answer as many questions as time permits. When asking your question, please state your full name and the entity you represent, if any, and confirm you are a registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder. We will now give attendees a moment to type in their questions.
For each question received virtually that is answered, we will summarize the question and read out loud the name of the person who asked the question and, if applicable, the entity such person represents. We would like to remind you that questions that were already answered or that are redundant or repetitive will not be published or answered.