Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited (CTCA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. I'm Karen Keyes, Head of Investor Relations, and it's my great pleasure to welcome you to Canadian Tower Corporation's Investor Day. In just a moment, I'll be handing you over to our President and CEO, Greg Hicks, who will kick off the day and introduce you to our strategy. Greg will be followed by Susan O'Brien, Chief Brand and Customer Officer; Aayaz Pira, President of Canadian Tire Financial Services and President and CEO of Canadian Tire Bank; and John Koryl, President of Digital. After a short break, you'll then hear from TJ Flood, President of Canadian Tire Retail; and Gregory Craig, Executive Vice President and CFO, who will share our financial aspirations for the next 4 years. Greg Hicks will then come back to conclude before we move to Q&A. For those of you who have not pre-submitted questions, you may do so through the question box on the platform at any time during the presentations today. Before we begin, I'd like to draw your attention to the cautionary language on the screen about forward-looking information that will be provided during this presentation. Such information is based on assumptions and is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from this information. During this presentation, we will also reference non-GAAP financial measures and ratios as well as supplementary financial measures, which we believe to be helpful to investors to better understand our business. Disclosure around the composition of these metrics and the related disclosures can be found within today's materials and where applicable, our management's discussion and analysis for the fourth quarter and full year ended January 1, 2022. I'd now like to welcome our President and CEO, Greg Hicks.

Thank you, Karen. Welcome, everyone, to what I know has been a much anticipated event, Canadian Tire Corporation's 2022 Investor Day. This day has been a long time coming. It's been several years since we've connected with you in this way and now certainly feels like the right moment for this presentation. Today marks 2 years, almost exactly, since I was named CEO of CTC. That was an extremely proud day for me. After spending my entire career in retail and essentially growing up with this brand, I'd reached what I'd long considered to be the summit of my career at CTC. In the weeks prior to my announcement, I'd spent time considering what kind of leader I wanted to be? What would it take to not only continue our iconic company's legacy, but to foster its growth. I had lots of plans and ideas, knowing I was assuming the reins of this great company at an enviable time in history. We built privileged assets, capabilities and a tenacious team that could compete in the new world of retail. We were ready. We just didn't realize what precisely we were ready for. As I'm sure you know all too well, today also marks 2 years almost exactly since the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The ink had barely dried on my contract when I realized that my dream job was not going to be anything like what I'd imagined or planned for. I took over during a time that was far from normal for me, for my team, for our tens of thousands of team members, for our customers and everyone across the globe. But in the face of uncertainty, anxiety and very real fear, we didn't back down. We leaned into our deep-rooted purpose of being there for life in Canada. This became our North Star. It galvanized our teams from the dealers and frontline store staff and contact and distribution center employees who continued to serve customers, to our corporate teams who quickly adapted to working remotely. We overcame considerable challenges by working faster and more collaboratively than we'd ever thought was possible. We developed new found agility out of necessity. We stepped up and we were there for our communities. We were able to overcome every challenge because across the enterprise, we all felt connected to something greater than ourselves. And reflecting on the last 2 years, I'm so proud of how our team showed up, but I'm not surprised. There's no question that a company's true value shine through during the crisis and our response was consistent with those instilled by our founders 100 years ago. When the Billes Brothers started this great company in 1922, they did so with an entrepreneurial spirit that was, quite frankly, ahead by a century. A.J. Billes has had a saying that we frequently reference "strive always to make things better." This credo is more than company lower. For the Billes Brothers, the idea of striving always to make things better came to life in countless ways, both big and small. They made things better for their customers by putting them at the center of everything they did. They continually expanded their product assortment to meet the ever-changing wants and needs of Canadians. As you know, Canadian Tire has long been more than just tires. They found ways to provide better service and treated their customers the way they themselves wanted to be treated, from introducing Road Hazard Insurance, which was the first ever tire warranty program to rewarding shoppers with the introduction of our country's oldest loyalty program, Canadian Tire Money. For the Billes Brothers, better also meant creating space for other Canadian entrepreneurs to grow their own business while being part of something bigger than themselves through the Canadian Tire dealer model. Better, meant lending a hand in their local communities by giving generous donations to hospitals and schools in establishing foundations and charities. Better, meant treating employees like owners through profit sharing and rewarding them with bonuses, extra vacation time and holiday gifts. The Billes Brothers built a great company, a company people are proud to work for. Company pride is something that can neither be forced nor manufactured. Pride is fostered by aligning to common goals and believing in a collective purpose. It's cultivated when we feel connected to something greater than ourselves. In facing COVID-19, we took pride in our common purpose of being there for life in Canada. We changed how we worked and we began working better together. As a result, a new Canadian Tire began to emerge, a more connected Canadian Tire, a better Canadian Tire. Everything we've overcome, achieved and learned over the past 2 years, combined with the strong foundation built by the Billes family has come together to give us a clear understanding of what it is we are in service of. And 1 month ago, we unveiled our evolved brand purpose to our internal teams across the enterprise. Our brand purpose is this, that we're here to make life in Canada better. It's simple, it's true. It's what we've done for 100 years and plan to do for another 100 years to come. With everyone aligned and connected to our brand purpose that we are here to make life in Canada better, we have clearly defined who we are. This, in turn, has unlocked our ability to shape bolder strategies and actions focused on both how we grow and how we operate. But what exactly does better mean for us as a company, for our customers, our team members and for you, our investors? Today, we're going to answer those questions. Recently, we announced our record-setting performance in 2021, the results of which were made possible by the many capabilities we'd previously been building, as well as our hard work and steadfast commitment since the onset of COVID-19. For 2 years, we've showcased our privileged assets from our 1,700 locations to our unique multi-category assortment, our best-in-class loyalty program, as well as our powerful capabilities such as our rock solid supply chain. These assets and capabilities weren't built in a day. We've been honing them in the years prior to the pandemic. For 2 years, we've been focused on building a better omni-channel business, including our platform upgrade, our site experience, our digital marketing, our mobile apps, our in-store technology and our improvements in both the economics and the speed of experience across every customer fulfillment method. For 2 years, we supported our communities when they needed us most. For 2 years, we've adapted, evolved and thrived in the face of constant change and uncertainty. For 2 years, we've been building the culture we not only want but need, in order to achieve our ambitious goals. And today, I can confidently say we are a different company than we were 2 years ago. During my time as CEO, I've heard a consistent reaction to our business performance from many of you other business leaders and even those in my social circles. People are happy to see us succeed, but are somewhat surprised. And often when been asked by analysts, investors and others about what they're missing with respect to understanding CTC, I've thought a lot about this question. Given my tenure and long-term association with this company, I had to take a step back and reflect on our evolution through a new lens. And here's the CTC I want you to see. We're one of the largest general merchandise players in Canada with $16 billion in sales. We're a multi-category, one-stop shopping destination for over 300 merchandise categories. We have 1,400 retailers that translate to 40 million square feet of micro fulfillment space, a footprint unparalleled in Canada. We're one of the largest e-commerce companies in the country with $2 billion in digital sales last year alone. We have one of the largest, if not the largest, click-and-collect businesses in the country. We have 11 million active Triangle Rewards members and 2.2 million Triangle credit card holders. We have a $5.7 billion highly differentiated own brands business and a leading technical outdoor brand, Helly Hansen, that is on track to triple its business in Canada since we acquired it and is prime to increase its global market share. Through our 70% majority share of CT REIT, we control one of the largest commercial real estate portfolios in the country. We are one of the only retailers in North America with a Schedule I chartered bank license. We have a world-class supply chain with significant automation and innovation. We're a company that supports the next generation and will soon surpass 3 million kids helped through our corporate charity, Jumpstart. Above all else, we have a brand that's been named The Most Trusted Retail Brand in Canada. This is the business we are today. And as we look to our future, we do so from a position of great strength. Our roster of assets and capabilities are all impressive in their own right. But combined, we have a platform that is as powerful as it is unique, which is why we're evolving from a company made up of strong yet disconnected banners, brands and services, to a connected enterprise-wide platform, where all of our banners and channels will collectively amplify and render each other more valuable, creating a truly differentiated customer experience, not only within each banner but across our banners. This is how we will drive better outcomes, a stronger competitive posture and long-term growth. Our objective is to be connected across banners and channels and always stay focused on being better. Internally, we are, therefore, referring to this new strategy as our Better Connected strategy. We will continue to modernize, evolving from a collection of banners, brands and channels to one integrated company. We will make strategic investments that will create better customer experiences, deeper customer connections and drive long-term growth and value for our shareholders. We have the management team required to make it so, with a collective ambition to embody our founders' credo of strive always to make things better. A team that is focused on being faster, more creative and actively forging our future, a team intends on connecting our diversified stable of assets so that they not only render each other but our entire company more valuable. The strategy you will hear today was developed with a clear understanding of where the customer is going. There's no doubt that our industry has benefited from pandemic tailwinds and that our execution has driven an increase in our market share. Customer expectations have shifted rapidly and permanently, and we believe these systemic changes provide us with a considerable opportunity to continue taking market share moving forward. When we look at where the customer is going, here's what we know to be true. The home is a sanctuary and customers will spend accordingly. At the same time, there has been an incredible amount of home turnover and a meaningful increase in suburban sprawl and rural revitalization. Millennials, who were long thought to remain long-term renters or condo dwellers, are leading this charge. We're also seeing an acceleration of trip consolidation, and given how challenging these past 2 years have been for smaller players, less consumer choice. Customers have adopted digital and omni-channel wins. The future will belong to retailers who can provide the most seamless experience across digital and physical channels. Stores offer immediacy, discovery and more control while click-and-collect and curbside pickup continue to be popular fulfillment choices. Localized assortment remains critical, and it's something we've always been good at thanks to our dealer model and our wealth of first-party data. Canadian household savings rates are up significantly relative to pre-pandemic levels. Economic nationalism continues to rise and immigration is reopening. Sustainability remains top of mind as concerns over climate change and resource scarcity continue to grow. Above all else, these past 2 years have demonstrated just how critical consumer trust is. The 2021 Edelman Trust report suggests that brand trust is the new brand equity. We know it's critical to stay vigilant about being the guardian of customer data and using data for good and we know trust stretches further than that. Trust is something that we work incredibly hard to earn and must work even harder to maintain. For trust is as fragile as it is precious. That which took a century to build can be broken in a matter of minutes. One bad customer experience, one misguided social media post, we've all seen how quickly a single poor decision can instantly eradicate consumer trust. We know that moving forward, trust will become even more important for retailers. The pandemic has changed a lot of things, including what customers expect from leading brands. We don't believe these changes are temporary or fleeting, but rather that they are fundamental. Some investors are asking if the categories in which we compete will continue to grow post pandemic. We believe that these systemic changes provide the backdrop for a growing total addressable market, and CTC is extremely well positioned to take advantage of them and gain market share. We are confident we have a solid understanding of where the customer is going and the conviction around how to win in the new realities and world of retail, a methodical plan to create valuable relationships in retail today. And we believe that those who own the most customer relationships win. And core to owning the relationship is access to customer data. The deep data insights allow us to create personalized and unique customer experiences. And these experiences create loyalty and an emotional connection to the brand, a connection that's hard to break. Canadian Tire is woven into the fabric of Canadian culture. The history of our brand is deeply connected to the history of our nation and its residents. We have that emotional connection on our side. And now we're going to double down and make it even stronger. Through our Better Connected strategy, we will create a seamless omni-channel experience that is unified across our portfolio of retail banners, products and services, making it easier for Canadians to connect to our brand and providing us with a breadth of customer data and insights that will allow us to personalize our customers' experience and better serve both them and their communities. Our Better Connected strategy starts with our brand purpose. We're here to make life in Canada better. Using our brand purpose as our North Star, we developed a tangible strategic direction, supported by 5 strategic pillars. Our strategic direction highlights our choices and actions that drive our differentiation and enable growth. We will modernize and create a more contemporary experience for our customers, while unifying the customer connection points across all of our banners, making the Triangle brand a trusted source for a variety of products and services. What you will hear today is that we have a robust runway to invest in and grow our business. We have resolute focus and are prioritizing investor organic growth in our core business, which remains key to our overall capital allocation philosophy. We will walk you through our plan for executing a winning omni-channel strategy that includes investing $3.4 billion over the next 4 years, an investment plan that will improve our competitive posture and position us to earn and reinforce better emotional connections with our customers. The 5 strategic pillars include corresponding initiatives and provide insight into our choices and investment over the next several years. The first pillar relates to the customer. We will create valuable relationships through the power of the Triangle. We will strengthen our Triangle brand and the value of our Triangle Rewards program, building lifetime relationships by acquiring new credit card members and continuing to foster personalized engagement and meaningful customer connections. The second pillar relates to experience. We will deliver Canada's best omni-channel experience. by providing a seamless end-to-end connection along the supply chain and to our customers across whichever channel they choose. The third pillar relates to product. We will design and deliver world-class products through our sourcing and design capabilities. We have generated incredible momentum through our $5.7 billion highly innovative and differentiated owned brands portfolio, and now we're taking it to new heights. The fourth pillar relates to community. We will further our positive impact on Canada through our strong community relationships. We will uphold our founders' spirit of giving and their legacy of striving always to make things better by investing in community and social initiatives that drive shared value and truly make life better for all communities today and tomorrow. And the fifth pillar relates to people and enablers. We will change the way we work to develop people, capabilities and systems to deliver our strategy. It's about more than changing how we work, it's about changing our approach to operating our business. We will invest in our people and large-scale enterprise infrastructure in key areas that will change the way we operate. You'll hear from the team today on pillars 1 through 3, and I will close with some thoughts on pillars 4 and 5. I'm so proud of our team and their efforts to build and shape our Better Connected strategy. We have reached what we believe to be an inflection point in our history. Last year, we conducted an investor perception study. Many of you participated and provided us with feedback, including your desire to hear more from us in 3 critical areas: our omni-channel strategy, our compelling and differentiated position and our capital allocation priorities. We're grateful for your valuable feedback as it provided clear direction on where to focus today's presentation. I'm confident that you'll leave today with a clear understanding of these 3 critical areas within our Better Connected strategy. With that, I want to thank you for joining us for today's presentation, and I'll now pass it over to Susan O'Brien.

Thanks, Greg, and good morning. It's really great to be here today to share with you how we're using our Triangle Rewards program to feel an incredibly powerful and profitable connection with our customers. Over the past several years, CTC's marketing capabilities have evolved dramatically and are now fueling our long-term growth. We've been on a journey to become a data-driven, customer-centric digital-first organization, all powered by our Triangle Rewards program. In 2021, Triangle loyalty sales represented 58% of total sales, up 11%, and outperforming total sales growth of 8%. Before I dive into the details of Triangle, I want to first anchor the program and our brand purpose. We are here to make life in Canada better. This is our North Star. And although newly articulated, we've been living it for the past 100 years. If there's any retailer in Canada that can claim a true emotional connection with the people of this country, it's CTC. But the world of retail has changed dramatically over the last decade. And you may be asking yourself, if we have what it takes to maintain our unparalleled connection to Canadians. The answer is a 100% yes. In fact, we're now connecting with our customers in more ways than ever before, and we're building these connections to be even stronger for the future. So the real question is, how are we doing it? If making life in Canada better is our North Star, then Triangle Rewards is our rocket fuel to take us there. As Greg said, our conviction is that those who own the most customer relationships win. Through Triangle, we've created a powerful and profitable flywheel that keeps customers coming back in shopping across all our banners and categories. Our flywheel starts with strong, relevant and trusted banners like Canadian Tire, Mark's, Sport Chek and Party City. With amazing assortments and the incredible breadth and choice we offer, we inspire our customers to become loyalty members. Once they're members, our ability to deepen our connection with them begins, our rocket fuel kicks in. They instantly start earning Canadian Tire Money, which motivates them to start spending more to earn more. The more they shop, the more data we get, which we translate into rich insights that allows us to personalize offers and experiences. These personalized offers and experiences encourage even more shopping across our banners and our members are even more Canadian Tire Money. The personalized nature of our offers, combined with all the value they're getting, builds even more trust and relevance for our banners. And so the cycle begins. Triangle Rewards is one of Canada's largest loyalty programs, but it's so much more than that. It's the source of one of the best customer data sets in Canada, bar none. It's a customer communications platform for highly personalized marketing, and it's a brilliant customer acquisition and engagement tool. So clearly, Triangle has a lot going for it in a world of increasingly data-driven marketing, but its greatest advantage is that at its core, it's a powerful brand that customers trust. This brand trust is the most essential component of our success. In fact, through Triangle Rewards, our primary mission is to grow the brand trust we have with Canadians. If data is key to understanding and connecting with customers to win in retail today, then we have to operate our business of data for good, and to create true value for our customers in exchange for their data. So far, we've been very successful in doing this, but we want to be even better. That's why being the most trusted and indispensable loyalty program in Canada is where we're going. Let's take a step back though and go through some basics about the program. There are 3 ways to participate in Triangle today. First, members of our free base loyalty program earn 0.4% back in Canadian Tire Money on every transaction across their banners. Second, Triangle credit card holders benefit from an accelerated earn rate they get 10x more Canadian Tire Money than the base program on every credit transaction across our family of companies. That amounts to 4% back. And now there's a third way to earn with a new program called Triangle Select, I'll share a bit more on this later. But it's not just the everyday earn that excites their members. They experience the best program value through our bonus and multiplier offers, which have come to be a major engagement driver for them. They love and look forward to our big multiplier events, weekly bonus offer created just for them. In fact, with many of our best members, we see a real gamification effect come into play. They spend time on our app investigating their offers, swapping them for better ones and stacking them with other offers we have in the market. This gamification creates a significant amount of member engagement. We rewarded $322 million in Canadian Tire Money last year, and members returned to our stores to cash in $277 million of it for products they love. That's up 30% since we launched Triangle in 2018. It's like Canada's second currency with its own little economy unto itself. And that little economy gets our flywheel rolling. The power in our program lies in our unique assortment across 11 banners and 300 business categories. Because of this, members feel huge satisfaction in saving for something special, and the fact that it's not a points program. $1 earned is $1 to spend. One of my favorite examples from last year is Sarah from Mississauga, who redeemed to our Canadian Tire Money for a mountain bike at Sport Chek, a ski tube, [indiscernible], mouse traps and a pop corn maker at Canadian Tire. She was able to fulfill her very specific wants and needs for free, which no doubt felt very rewarding and increased her loyalty to CTC. So -- we have a popular program that our members love. That's great in and of itself. But there's more to the story here. The real headline is that because our customers are highly engaged in the program, it's driving disproportionate sales growth for CTC. Triangle Rewards members spend significantly more at CTC than non-members, almost double. That's $400 more per year for an average loyalty member compared to a non-loyalty customer. And that's just for the average member. If we go one step further to look at spend for our best members, those who spend make up the top 20% of our total loyalty sales, they spend 6x as much as non-members. That's $2,500 more per year than a non-member. Imagine moving even a small portion of our average members up closer to our best members, but I'm going to get to that later on. These member spend stats are impressive. But the reality is member spend doesn't matter unless you have enough membership scale to make a difference to your bottom line. In other words, the only way a loyalty program is game-changing for our company is by having a lot of active, engaged members. The number we follow closely is the active loyalty member base, those members who made at least 1 purchase in the last 12 months. In 2021, we ended the year with 11 million active members. That's a pretty big number when you consider that there are only 31 million adults in Canada and roughly 14 million total households. So -- Triangle has scale, members spend more and they love the rewards we offer. Where do we go from here to drive even more growth and even more brand trust? Our entire focus is on fueling that customer flywheel by using the power of Triangle. When we think about powering our customer flywheel through Triangle, there are 2 streams. The first is continuing to acquire new members. The second is driving more spend from our existing loyalty base. Let's start with attracting new members. Our ability to acquire program members is one of our greatest competitive advantages. We use the full weight of our banners, physical locations, our petroleum business, our bank and our digital channels to bring new members into both the Triangle base and Triangle credit card. We added 1.8 million new members in 2020 and 2.4 million new members in 2021, the majority joining through CTR. But what's exciting is that we're increasingly seeing new members join from across our banners. Mark's, Party City and Sport Chek are becoming incredibly valuable sources of members, expanding our reach and attracting different customer segments into the program. What we know about these new customers is that they are increasingly younger and more urban, critical segments who will grow with us for the future. We're also doing a better job retaining our new members. The first and most critical step in driving greater activity engagement from new members is in getting them registered with their name, address and ideally an opt-in an e-mail so we can start marketing to them. Case in point, for all new members we acquired in 2020, 52% remained active in 2021, a 134 basis points increase in retention year-over-year, pretty strong in the loyalty world. But when we compare this with registered new members, we saw 82% of them become active the following year, a 400 basis point increase versus 2019. Program registration is a core focus for our team, given its power to unlock greater member engagement. Our next area of focus is on the mix of membership. As I mentioned before, we have a base membership in the program and an accelerated earned membership with our credit card. We say accelerated earned because by using our credit card, members earn Canadian Tire Money at a much faster rate creating the ideal circumstance for greater engagement. The more they earn, the more quickly that flywheel accelerates. Of our 11 million active members, 2.2 million of them participate by using our credit card across our banners. Loyalty members who hold a Triangle MasterCard spend on average nearly $1,400 per year with us. That's 45% more than the average member. Right after me, Aayaz is going to show the many ways we're acquiring new credit members and improving the Triangle credit card value prop to drive even more retail spend. But what we noticed in our data is that there are still a number of our best members who don't have our credit card. Regardless of how much they love shopping with us, they simply don't want another credit card in their wallet. As a result, they're missing out on the huge value that comes with trading up to an accelerated earned product, and we're missing out on a chance to get even more out of our best members. In response to this need, we launched an alternative for those who want more value from Triangle without the commitment of a credit card, Triangle Select, an accelerated earned product that bridges our base loyalty and credit card value propositions. Triangle Select is an annual fee-based membership program. We built the program with feedback from our customer panel and insights from our Triangle data to create the best value proposition for our unique business model. For a fee of $89 per year, Select members receive a number of benefits that stack on top of their base loyalty benefits. This includes 10x Canadian Tire Money on all in-store purchases, 25x on our owned brand products every day, free shipping benefits at CTR, Mark's and Sport Chek, discounts from hellyhansen.com, a free credit membership and a welcome gift. We're currently running an invite-only Triangle Select pilot program with 11,000 existing Triangle members. So far, we're really liking what we're seeing, trending towards a 20% sales increase above our original projections. Early results, but we believe Select members are consolidating more of their shopping to CTC to take advantage of the accelerated earn opportunities, and we're feeling very good about this program's potential for success as we roll it out nationally in the back half of this year. Between our Triangle credit card and our Triangle Select program, our accelerated earned products are getting that flywheel moving even faster. While new member acquisition will always be important, we have a program today that already has 11 million active members. The real juice is in growing existing member spend. Remember, I said that our best members spend 6x more than a non-member? Even if we compare it to an average loyalty member, these top 20% of members outpace the average by 3x. They are best members for one reason, they're more engaged and take part in more aspects of our ecosystem, our connected enterprise platform, as Greg called it. Our mission is to use our rich first-party data to understand what makes our current best customers tick, and to use that knowledge to get lower spend members to behave in a similar fashion, driving up their spend. And because of Triangle Rewards, we understand exactly who our best members are and precisely what interest them. This is a huge advantage for us. Retailers who don't have a highly penetrated loyalty program have a really hard time understanding who their best customers are and, more importantly, how to engage them. Here's what we know about our best members today. First of all, they visit and spend significantly more, 35 visits per year and $3,000 in spend. But there are 5 critical behaviors that differentiate our best members from our lower spend members. Our best members buy across many more categories, shop across multiple banners, over indexes credit card holders, they take part in our digital communications channels, including our one-to-one offers program, and they transact both in-store and online with us. We focus on these 5 engagement levers to drive up member spend. In the next few minutes, I'm going to use the term engagement a lot. Almost every retailer defines engagement differently for their unique business model. And that makes sense because there are different drivers of engagement depending on what you sell and to whom. For us, based on what we've learned from our best member behavior. It's about introducing members to new categories, new banners, new communication channels, our credit card and getting them to transact online. The more of these engagement levers they take part in, the better spend we see from them. Along the bottom of this slide are those 5 engagement levers I've just mentioned. And the X-axis represents low to high member participation in any of these levers. Along the y-axis is member spend. What you can see is that participation in more of the engagement levers correlates with higher spend per member. The bar to the furthest right is our best members. This group over-indexes in all 5 engagement levers. What this shows is a huge opportunity to grow spend per member if we can shift more lower spend members further to the right, closer to our top 20% best members. Let's look at some customer examples to give you a sense for how engagement comes to life at CTC and how members with a little help from us move through these engagement levers to become better spend members. [Presentation]

In both examples, the flywheel effect I described is taking hold. The more we can introduce customers into other categories and banners, into digital channels, into our credit card, the more they earn and the stickier the program becomes. So how do we kick this flywheel in a high gear? Through the power of personalization. To personalize communications at scale, you need 2 things: number one, a sizable owned audience to digitally communicate with; and two, high-volume and high-quality first-party data. And we have a wealth of both. Let's start with number one, a digital-owned audience to communicate with in the digital space. We've built an enormous owned audience of more than 14 million contactable e-mail subscribers and app users across Triangle in all of our banners. We call this group our owned audience because we own the direct relationship with these customers, and we can communicate with them via e-mail and through our apps. Between these 2 owned communications channels, we can talk directly to 14 million e-mail and app users without incremental cost as often as we want with whatever message we think most valuable. With this own communications audience in hand, our next step is to figure out what to say to these customers, which brings me to number 2, using our rich first-party data to personalize messages and experiences that allows to up-sell and cross-sell into new categories and banners. First-party data is transactional or behavioral data collected through our own channels, from our loyalty and email programs, our credit card and from our apps and websites. What makes first-party data so powerful is that it's owned by us and can be used to create highly targeted messaging because it gives us insight into what our customers are like at an individual level. It's the difference between getting a general e-mail communication for pet food versus one which knows you have a new kitten who seems to enjoy Friskies. To personalize communications and experience as well, you need unbelievably high-quality customer data and the ability to draw meaningful insights from it. And we think we have one of the best data sets in the country, data that comes from 300 business categories covering a huge spectrum of Canadian jobs and joys, our credit card, which gives us insight on what customers shop outside our stores and 1 billion digital visits per year. We've also made critical investments in our capabilities to use first-party data over the last several years. We've expanded our loyalty program across all our banners, created a single source of truth for customer data, implemented a customer data platform, and we continue to invest in critical data engineering and analytics talent. The best example of how we're using these investments to personalize communications and drive sales as our Triangle one-to-one offers program. Each week, we send out customized offers to millions of members. If you're a pet lover, you'll get customized pet offers from Canadian Tire. If you're a DIYer, you'll get tool offers from CTR and work apparel offers from Mark's, or Helly Hansen offers from Chek if you're a skier. Our data team is getting so good at picking up signals on member needs that in 2021, one-to-one offers were part of baskets totaling $1.4 billion in sales, and we expect that to increase meaningfully over the next few years as we get even better at using our rich first-party data. Lastly, I want to touch on becoming leaders in using data for good. And for us this means giving customers real value in exchange for the use of their date. We've established the Canadian consumers know Canadian Tire and we know them through our long history together. The trust us to make life in Canada better and for customers in a digital age that means keeping their data safe in a world increasingly reliant on companies to do the right thing when it comes to privacy in data use, having a customer's trust, while running one of Canada's largest loyalty programs is a coveted advantage. Even more than that, it's our responsibility. Our loyalty program sends 11 banners in our bank. Protecting the trust and reputation of our brand is critical. We believe we can find a way to differentiate our program by using data in the best possible way by creating so much value for our customers that they have incentive to share with us and by fiercely protecting their data. We have a long history as a bank, so we've grown up as a retailer concerned with data protection and privacy. And we'll continue to do this throughout our loyalty offering, as you would expect from a brand that plans to differentiate on trust. We'll create outsized emotional connections by truly helping our customers make their lives better, with the right value, the right message and the right experience exactly when and where they need it. As you can tell, we believe Triangle is a key growth driver for CTC and a core driver of customer connections in the future, and we've still got plenty of runway. Our path to better by the end of 2025 includes driving our loyalty as a percentage of retail sales from 58% to north of 63%. We'll do this by: number one, using the power of our strong trusted banners and acquisition capabilities to better attract new valuable members into Triangle; number two, by focusing marketing and operational efforts on better program registration and marketing opt-in as a means to drive increased number of retentions and activity; number three, by successfully rolling our Triangle Select nationally to drive even better spend per member, trip consolidation and program loyalty; number four, continuing to build an even better owned audience of customers we can communicate with as often as we like at a fraction of the cost of paid media and lat but not least, by using our rich first party data to drive our personalization capability and creates even better value in our member's life. Triangle isn't just a marketer's dream, it's truly a retailer's dream, it makes us experts in understanding our customers better than any other company, but we aren't just any company. We've fostered real brand trust with customers and helped make life in Canada better for 100 years. As I mentioned earlier, if being here to make life in Canada betters or North Star, then Triangle is our rocket fuel because it accelerates our course and our flywheel and puts our customers at the center of everything we do. We'll continue winning with our customers now and well into the future. With that, I'll pass it off to Aayaz.

Thanks, Susan. I can't tell you how excited I am to be here today to provide a brief overview of our Canadian Tire Financial Services business and how it fits into our Better Connected strategy. But first, I want to share some of the basics of our business. The same advantages of our Triangle loyalty program that Susan mentioned apply to our bank. The greatest competitive advantage for CTFS is the combination of the CTC assets under our umbrella, the full weight of our 11 banners, our 11 million Triangle loyalty members and our 1,700-plus physical locations and our digital channels. Let's not forget the halo, which CTFS benefits from with the brand trust that Canadians have in Canadian Tire. Now these are set of differentiating physical and digital assets that many traditional banks could only dream of having. Today we are among the largest issuers of credit cards in the nation with approximately 2.2 million within our portfolio and we recently ranked 2nd in J.D. Power's annual review of credit card customer satisfaction. Our in-store and online buy-now-pay-later program has helped Canadians finance $400 million of the purchases in 2021 across our retail banners and our retail deposit business of high interest savings accounts, GICs, NTFSAs is one of many tactical levers that helps us manage our portfolio of liquidity and funding. Now on to our core product the Triangle MasterCard. Our Triangle MasterCard provides Canadian Tire shoppers and Canadians with some of the best value and features in the market. We have two no fee everyday credit cards. While we regarded as best no fee retail cards for high reward accumulation. As you heard from Susan Triangle credit card customers earned 4% in Canadian Tire Money across our group of companies. And in 2021 credit card customers earned the equivalent of $240 million in Canadian Tire Money which is 75% of all Canadian Tire Money issued within the year. In addition to our cards and deposit business, we also have the advantage of running our in-store and online payment network for all CTC banners. This provides us with unique benefits including cost savings from processing along credit cards, enablement of real-time loyalty capabilities at a point of sale and facilitating instant credit card issuance as a part of our account open process. Also this capability allows us to offer payment options to our customers like buy-now-pay-later. Our banking and payment platforms provide us with direct insight into what Canadians are purchasing 365 days a year and gives us access to some of the richest first party data to help fuel Canadian Tires business growth insights and strategy. And the good news is we're just getting started. While we are focused on customer account and balancing growth within our business, we have extremely strong experience and capabilities in risk management and collections. This, combined with the ample funding sources to support growth gives me great confidence in growing our receivables. Now before I provide an overview of our plan to build and modernize the business, let me spend a few moments picking up where Susan left off and showcase how CTFS accelerates the development of even higher value customers with our credit card members. Our Triangle MasterCard customers are among the most loyal and engaged shoppers across our retail banners. When compared to base loyalty members, they spend close to twice as much, shop more frequently, they hold higher tenures within our loyalty program and have higher NPS scores. Because of this, our bank is in a unique position to help deepen relationships with our customers and accelerate spend. Now let me spend some time on our Triangle credit card customers. First, let's level set. As you've already heard, credit card customers spend $1,400 annually across our banners. That's 45% more than Triangle base loyalty members. Basic credit card customers represent about half of our overall portfolio with an average spend of $1,100 a year. Now moving up the value continuum, digitally engaged credit card customers, those who use our Triangle banking app, online banking, mobile wallet, e-statements and other features, spend around $200 more and represent 42% of our portfolio. And when we combine the digitally engaged credit card customer with the power of additional banking products and services like our buy-now-pay-later feature, we saw average customer spend reach $2,500 in 2021. Engaging our customers more, ensuring they're interacting with us digitally and upselling into larger product offerings really pays off. Now let's shift gears and talk about the opportunity ahead and our plan for growth and modernization. We have 3 core areas of focus in the medium term: one, creating deeper retail customer connections; two, going digital; and three, product testing and innovation. Let's start with our plan to create deeper customer connections. We are planning to create deeper customer connections because as we've seen, with strong engagement, we can amplify our portfolio of customers that represent our highest value enterprise customers and get people into that earned flywheel that Susan spoke to earlier. Now let's talk about customer growth. We'll also be doing this in 3 primary ways. First, by acquiring new customers; second, by upselling our loyalty members; and third, by engaging existing customers. Now in acquiring new customers, we are focused on continuing to grow our account base and active users with a big shift to digital acquisition using our first-party data, we're able to identify the customers who would really benefit the most from our Triangle MasterCard. Armed with this information and our proprietary risk models, we're able to curate the optimal mix of customers, which are valuable for both CTC and our financial service business. Our shift to digital acquisition only furthers the possibilities as we are able to really target the customers we know are best for our business. Working with John Koryl and our CTC digital team, we will start to enhance the ability for customers to apply for a credit card through the e-commerce checkout experience and really capitalize on an audience that would benefit from earning Canadian Tire Money on their online purchases. We started to make this shift, and we're seeing that digitally acquired customers skew younger. They are amongst the most engaged within our ecosystem, spending 2x more than customers acquired in all other channels. And let's not forget our enormous physical store footprint that has traditionally driven the majority of new accounts. Moving forward, in-store acquisition will continue to be a big part of our Better Connected strategy. Now let's move to upselling Triangle loyalty members. We know our Triangle loyalty members have a strong affinity for our brands. Our owned channels allow us to identify and upsell valuable CTC customers at a significantly lower cost than our other channels as they are already spending time on CTC properties. Through the use of our proprietary data, we will find customers within our Triangle membership base that we believe look like great credit card core from a risk, spend and profitability perspective. and offer them our strongest acquisition offers. We are already collaborating with Susan and our Triangle team to attract our base loyalty members to our credit card, and our early results are extremely positive, delivering higher quality and approval rates. Early performance indicates that this group of customers is highly engaged. In the first 90 days, their average spend across CTC is 20% higher, and the number of trips to our stores is double. So what about our existing customers? As we showcased earlier, customers that engage with our digital channels are better customers for CTC. And we believe there is ample opportunity to engage them further as only 42% of our existing customers engage digitally. Our new onboarding program will provide incentives to download our Triangle mobile banking app convert to e-statements, add their cards to their Apple Pay and G PAY wallets, use banking notifications and best of what we offer today within our digital banking channels. We'll also look to stimulate additional spend and credit card usage through the thoughtful use of credit limit increases, migrating our best customers from the base card to the world elite card and by adding a supplementary card to their account. Accounts with a supplementary card spend 2.5x more and transact twice as much as those without. We will drive a renewed focus on educating our customers and driving awareness on some of the incredible card benefits we offer such as roadside assistance, bonus Canadian Tire Money, and let's not forget, using our buy-now-pay-later capability. And all the while, we'll continue to ensure our best customers are encouraged to stick with us. We'll do this by making sure their experience with us is first class, be that through priority call center access, preferred sign up for additional products or special member events like our Triangle days. The next way we are going to modernize our bank is by going digital. And by the way, we are going digital in a big way. In fact, our Triangle mobile banking app has seen 60% year-over-year growth. Today, we already see 100 million logins to our digital channels a year. This provides us with 100 million opportunities to surprise, delight and provide our customers with more Triangle loyalty offers. Our Triangle app has an incredible competitive advantage Triangle loyalty and mobile banking are housed in one mobile experience. We want to amplify this opportunity and significantly increase the number of Triangle app downloads and logins. And we'll achieve this through a higher proportion of digitally engaged customers, best-in-class digital banking capabilities and our ongoing personalized loyalty offers. To ensure we remain competitive and meet the evolving needs of Canadians, the majority of our priorities and investments will be allocated towards modernizing digital banking and shifting to a mobile-first approach. Our new digital banking platform will also position us to innovate, reduce risk and adapt to regulatory changes, including open banking with a digital-first infrastructure. And with our shift to digital acquisition, we're also introducing a more customer-friendly approach to make it easier to open accounts from their digital devices. We'll do this by introducing new anti-money laundering and know-your-client capability using machine learning and AI, and by streamlining the account opening experience, enabling customers to apply for a card from their mobile device in under 5 minutes by taking a selfie and a photo of a government-issued ID. Providing our customers with more digital features and capabilities will help us accelerate the shift to creating digitally active customers. Finally, our customer insights and data are telling us that Canadians trust our brand and are interested in more financial products and services from CTFS. That's why we're expanding our products services and card features, which are connected to real customer needs. We want to build the success we have had with our buy-now-pay-later feature and have plans to introduce a customer-focused set of digital-only products in the next 12 to 24 months. This includes a buy-now-pay-later capability for our customers to use outside of CTC banners and in non-competing categories such as travel, buy a plane ticket, book a hotel and rent a car on your Triangle MasterCard, and we'll give you the option to finance your vacation over the course of 24 months. As immigration continues to grow in Canada, newcomers will continue to be a core focus of our retail business and our bank. Working with our partners at MasterCard, we will be introducing global money transfer capabilities on our credit cards and the ability to send money to over 100 countries around the world. These are just a few examples of new products we will start to introduce. These products complement our retail business. They drive loyalty and support the evolving needs of Canadian consumers, and they'll increase issuance of Canadian Tire Money into the market. And while products such as our high interest savings accounts, our historical sources of funding to our credit card portfolio, they also present a great opportunity to expand our product offering. Our team is also working closely with our partners at Scotiabank and Tangerine to explore opportunities to introduce joint value propositions to Canadians. I truly believe that this partnership will help us accelerate our product innovation agenda and expand the current partnership beyond what exists today. We are investing in products that add real value to CTFS and CTC overall and tie back to amplifying that flywheel of our retail business. After all, for most of the new products being contemplated today, we see Canadian Tire Money issuance and being a critical part of the offering. I'm truly excited about the future of our financial services business and the role CTFS can play to integrate our retail brands and our loyalty program to create the best customers for CTC. At a time when retailers, big tech and start-ups are entering the world of financial services, we have a depth of experience and are working on the next generation of our business. Our competencies and competitive advantage in customer service, collections and risk management will continue to be core to our business. And at the same time, we have plans to continue to deliver strong income contribution. With that said, I hope you leave today with a better understanding of CTS and our unique competitive positioning. Now let's recap Canadian Tire financial services path-to-better integration with retail by leveraging CTC's unique physical and digital assets and capturing the value of our own channels, CTFS will benefit from stronger integration with our retail partners and loyalty members. By investing in an open banking digital platform, we have a solid plan for growth, customer engagement and innovation, which will result in more valuable CTC customers and continued contribution to bottom line earnings. And lastly, better customers for CTC. Our primary revenue source will continue to center around our Triangle credit card. It will be complemented by new digital-only products to increase customer engagement and loyalty leading to stronger first-party data, increased basket sizes and more Canadian Tire Money for our customers to redeem resulting in better customers for CTC. While I've only been with CTC for 10 months, I continue to see an incredible opportunity to build a leading digital bank with the benefits of a trusted iconic Canadian brand. Now I will pass you over to my friend and colleague, John Koryl.

Thanks, Aayaz, and good morning, everyone. Great to be here with all of you. As you've heard, we've made significant strides on a number of fronts over the past few years and digital is no exception. In the past 2 years, we will become more accustomed to operating across the digital and physical divide, both in terms of how we operate our business and meet our customers' evolving needs. And while some of you may think of us as a bricks-and-mortar retailer, by the end of this presentation, I hope you will have a more comprehensive view of just how extensive our digital capabilities are. And more importantly, how we're advancing the ability for customers to experience CTC a across digital and store channels through the whole customer journey. As Greg made it clear earlier, we have a strong brand, a brand that drives people to CTC in the first place, and it contributes to our websites being among the most visited in Canada. But in keeping with our brand purpose to make life in Canada better, part of our job is to make sure we remain committed to continuous improvement and drive significant progress over a number of dimensions. Over the past 2 years, we've seen increased visits to our websites, making Canadian Tire the 2nd most visited retailer in Canada across the general merchandise, sporting goods and apparel spaces. with close to 1 billion visits a year across our enterprise. We've grown Canadian Tire app usage from 500,000 to 1.25 million customers and monthly Triangle app usage from 400,000 to 1 million customers between 2019 and 2021. This rivals some of the most used retail and loyalty apps in Canada. Customers who engage as are seeing an increasingly sophisticated app experience, which has translated into a steadily increasing app score. Also, over the last 3 years, we've become one of the biggest transacting digital businesses in the country, with around $2 billion or 13% of our sales delivered via our digital channels in 2021. This is an e-commerce penetration rate among the best in the Canadian market. Now as Greg mentioned off the top, these improvements did not come overnight. All of this is built off of 3 years of critical investments to evolve our digital infrastructure, increase our customer touch points and better understand our customers' needs, so we can be better placed to get them what they want and how they want it. From a capital perspective, the biggest investment has been our One Digital Platform, which ramped significantly from 2019 to 2021 with the last phase of investment plan for 2022 as we roll out the final implementation for each of our major Canadian retail brands. I'll touch more on ODP later. These critical investments we've made in the last few years have enabled us to scale dramatically within a 3 year time frame we moved from a system that can support about 5,000 orders on canadiantire.ca, the one that is capable of supporting 200,000 orders every day. They've reduced friction. By using site analytics and NPS feedback, we've been able to eliminate thousands of minor site issues negatively impacting the customer experience. General improvements targeting site performance, checkout success rates and reducing limited inventory product page views have collectively resulted in a material impact to store sales and gone a long way in delivering the seamless experience that we're looking to provide. We've also used customer insights to improve service by highlighting inventory based on customer location. This increases our customer convenience and helps our bottom line by reducing variable fulfillment costs. Next, we've improved product data. in a very short period of time, we've gone from having only the most basic product information to being able to provide much better data driving better product discovery on Google and our own site. We've complemented our own product data with customer-generated content like customer reviews and ask and answer capabilities. The ability of our apps to bring this digital product detailed to life by scanning products in stores has shown how digital initiatives are driving remarkable improvements in the store experience as well. Next up, expanding our inventory. Our inventory availability on site, which is updated as soon as it's scanned in at the store receiving gate, has improved transparency of our inventory and driven sell-through. By improving our real-time inventory availability for store receipts, we increased inventory visibility, which in turn drives up trip assurance and increases sell-through. We've also come a long way in showing a complete picture of store inventory across all the banners of our site. For example, Sport Chek now shows 96% of our entire assortment online. And for Sport Chek and Atmosphere, we ensure that eligible products that are available on one site are also available on the other to expand the audiences seeing related assortment. And last but not least, we're better integrating with our partners. We are making strategic decisions on what to build versus what we buy digitally. Site search, product recommendations and post-purchase communication are areas where we leverage our customer-specific data with top quartile partners to produce the best experience. This is for customers on the site app, store kiosks and even employee devices. These are just a few of the many improvements we've made on the digital front over the past few years, all to ensure that any investment we make must be tied directly to improving the customer experience. While our recent digital platform investments were more focused on what customers need to complete their shopping journey, our next area of focus is on how Canadian customers are looking to complete their shopping journey. How the journey starts, ends and everything in the middle varies by customer. As Susan mentioned before me, we use first-party customer data from the bank, our loyalty program, app and site visits to provide the right experience for each customer. We measure this by how our digital visits convert to sales online or in-store and of course, higher NPS. Recognizing the various paths customers can use to experience our brand, we deliberately evolved our product and accessibility in a number of ways. At Canadian Tire, over the course of the pandemic, we accelerated our click-and-collect digital business to be among the top non-grocery retailers in the country. This drove higher NPS and increases in basket size, resulting in an attachment rate of 20%. This proves that if we serve the customer quickly, they invest that a lot of time shopping more in our store and our leading connected and digitally enhanced omni-channel experience allows us to meet customers on their terms. And that includes best-in-class 1-hour curbside pickup at Sport Chek, pickup lockers, which allow customers to order online and retrieve their products on their own, and ship to home, including new partnerships such as a Sport Chek trial with DoorDash that we launched this past December and have already expanded to almost all Ontario stores to provide last-mile delivery in 2 hours. Through this pandemic, what's become clear both from a sales perspective and market share perspective, is that we become the best version of ourselves when all channels are open, and we work in a connected way. The past 2 years have evolved our thinking to focus on providing a connected, frictionless customer experience. whether online or in-store, we'll deliver more automated digital experiences in ways that respond to customer preferences and anticipate where they're headed. But in understanding where the Canadian customer is headed, we know how important it is to be able to compete in the digital space. And as Canada's leading omni-channel retailer, we know that getting digital right means doing so in a way that benefits CTC. In our case, this often means enticing customers to the store. So now the why. Because in-store sales account for 75% to more than 90% of our sales, depending on the banner, and because we know that the majority of our customers begin their journey by conducting research online before completing their purchase in-store, I think of digital as the life force of the stores. Our digital experience has been built with that key premise in mind. We plan to strengthen the connectivity between digital and store with many of the initiatives we've discussed. Two initiatives currently underway are endless aisle and digital services. Let's spend a bit of time on endless aisle. It's a perfect example of a capability that blends digital and store experience, giving customers choice in how they shop. To give you some context, this is merchandise owned by our vendor partners, ship from their warehouse to our store or directly to the customer. Endless aisle allows us to test new product categories and price bands to make sure we evolve our assortment without unnecessary inventory investment. As TJ will discuss shortly, we know that space is finite. So we asked ourselves the question, how can we make the best use of the space we've got. Through endless aisle, we're extending our assortment beyond what can just be squeezed into an aisle. By enhancing our in-store digital capabilities, we now allow our customers to discover more in-store than they otherwise would. Think of a high-ticket barbecue or a home renovation assortment that is typically too big an opportunity cost for most of our dealers to hold in store. But a product that we might identify to be of interest through our customer's web searches. Through endless aisle we can allow our customers to discover complementary in-store items that they might otherwise never have come across. Endless aisle is live today and our goal is to double our online assortment in terms of total SKUs in 2022 and to continue to grow it for better. Another way we're further integrating digital into our in-store experience is by providing digitally-enabled services such as arranging an appointment online for more complex in-store interaction such as tire changeover. I'm sure anybody in today's audience who ever had to have worked on, on their car would appreciate being able to schedule their appointments and receive updates at the click of a button. We see this capability being used across multiple sites and functions in our ecosystem bike assembly, sharpening skates, putting together the perfect balloon arrangement. The possibilities are endless. So now that you got the sense on where we been, what's already in progress let's turn to where we're going next on digital. Over the near term, we've identified 3 areas of focus. Our first area of focus is going to be on building out the capabilities of what we're calling One Digital Platform. One Digital Platform is a future-state digital ecosystem that will provide integrated search, checkout and fulfillment across Canadian Tire's banners. ODP was initiated to bring stability and scalability to the site. In rebuilding our digital platform in the cloud, we are modernizing not only our digital stack, but the way we work to take us into the future. The second near-term priority, in keeping with our mission of continuous improvement, is a commitment to building out our apps and increasing their functionality for the customers and bridging any perceived experience gaps between the digital and physical world. And finally, we're going to be expanding our in-store digital capabilities. Let me get into each of these in turn, beginning with ODP and its benefits. Keep in mind, the first 2 benefits I'll talk about, reliability and adaptability, are by design-intended not to be noticed by the customer. But they still prove critical in enhancing our digital offering. While reliability may sound like table stakes, I can't stress enough how incredibly important it is, particularly building off some of the challenges we had at the beginning of the pandemic. Through ODP and our digital migration to the cloud, customers can count on a fast, consistent and reliable digital shopping experience. The second benefit is adaptability. ODP will enable the company to quickly adapt and improve customer experiences by using customer data to deliver more personalized experiences through large-scale multivariate testing capabilities. The next 2 benefits are where the customer will really feel the impact well beyond what we discussed already. The third benefit of ODP that I'll highlight today is product discovery. By building off one of the things that customers like most about Canadian Tire, ODP will mimic online what we already do so well in the store, increase opportunities for product discovery. And rather than limiting discovery to new products, ODP will make discovery across banners, endless aisle partners and other partners possible via a single checkout. Finally, an improved customer experience. By thinking mobile first, ODP will deliver a fresh customer experience through its modern design and quality browsing. Another major focus area is building out our apps to improve the shopping experience and unlock cross-banner integration, all with a view to delivering a seamless fulfillment of customer needs. Over the past year, we've made some truly incredible improvements to the apps customer experience and customer utility. The app now includes opportunities for our customers to redeem loyalty points, to link up with the Triangle Rewards program, scan QR codes and very soon access their auto service appointments online and interact with electronic shelf labels, which we expect to be at the majority of Canadian Tire stores over the coming years. Perhaps the most exciting addition to the app experience has been the launch of in-store mode. In-store mode allows customers to use their personal devices to browse the store more effectively, access product recommendations and will soon allow customers to sell it to an associate. And this feature has seen rapid adoption. During the third and fourth quarters of 2021, we saw nearly 20% of active app users engage with this feature. Another exciting feature that is on our road map is the app's way-finding capability, which will use mapping functionality to make it easier and faster for customers to find products in-store. Employees and customers alike have told us that the ability to use our apps to quickly locate the products they're looking for in-store has been a complete game changer. As you can see, the app is a critical tool for enhancing both digital and in-store customer experiences. We want this digitally connected experience offered through our app to be available for all customers. That's why we're also equipping our 500-plus Canadian Tire stores with capabilities to support digitally augmented experiences through the use of in-store kiosks. The kiosks leverage the mobile app infrastructure, ensuring our customers and employees are speaking the same language. And looking at the same assortment appointment schedules and product reviews in real time. Getting digital-right translates to a stronger bottom line. So what does the path-to-better look like for Canadian Tire's digital experience? For us, it means building off the investments we've already made, taking key learnings to keep pushing ahead and making our digital and in-store experiences even more connected. All told, the critical moves we've made in the digital space, from the websites and our ODP implementation to the apps, are enabling faster and more convenient fulfillment and leading a seamless customer experience across our digital and physical channels because we know it simply cannot be either bricks-and-mortar or digital. It has to be both. That's why over the next 3 years, we expect customers to notice a truly better connected retail experience that will deliver seamless and better integration between our digital and physical channels, one that offers customers more control and choice in how they shop with us. Technologies that are consistently deployed to the benefit of customers and employees alike from the app, to the website, to our in-store digital presence, new and better fulfillment and delivery options that aren't available today and better cross-banner integration and greater enterprise connectivity through ODP. Our goal is to get the experience right for our customers to identify market opportunities and continue building one of the leading omni-channel, cross-banner integrations among Canadian retailers. Ultimately, this will drive better shopping experiences for our customers, however they choose to shop. That's where we've been investing and where we'll continue to focus moving forward. Now we'll take a short break before we're joined by TJ. [Break]

Welcome, everyone. Thanks, Koryl, and thank you, team. You've all really teed me up well to tell our story, and it's a story about growth. For the next few minutes, I'm excited to walk you through the momentum we have with Canadians, the large and growing total addressable market in which we compete, our significant market share position and our opportunity to grow it, how we'll deploy our world-class capabilities to evolve our assortment and how we will invest in our stores to improve our omnichannel experience, both of which will grow market share. When you consider all these factors, combined with the capabilities Susan, Aayaz and Koryl spoke to, there's no doubt we will continue our momentum and grow Canadian Tire faster than we pre-pandemic on top of the phenomenal growth we have seen in the last 2 years. Given its size and importance, I will be speaking primarily about Canadian Tire retail's growth opportunities today, but recognize that the same opportunities exist and similar capabilities will be deployed at Sport Chek and Mark's. So let's get into it. To say we have momentum with Canadians is an understatement. The team provided you with substantial insight into our customer and digital engagement growth. That connection with Canadians propelled us to grow the CTR business 5 years worth of growth in 2020 alone. And then in 2021, the business grew on top of that. Our unique multi-category assortment has allowed us to become a one-stop shop for the jobs and joys of life in Canada. We break down our business into 5 divisions: automotive, living, fixing, playing and seasonal. And we commence strong margin rates across our divisions with automotive leading the charge at 48%. Although sizing the total industry is not an exact science, we feel through triangulating numerous data sources, we have a good understanding of the market dynamics. We have a diverse offering. So we compete in a large total addressable market now sized at $63 billion. It's grown substantially since 2020. And as Greg pointed out, is poised for future growth. We have grown market share during the pandemic and now sit at roughly 16% of the market. We hold market leadership in many categories and have a significant range in market share across our categories. And because the market is so fragmented, we have significant headroom to make gains in market share, whether we have low share or market leadership. For example, in categories like pet, we have market share as low as 3% and see a lot of upside opportunity. In categories like tires, we are the market leader with an 18% share. This leaves us with 82% of the market to attain. So upside here, too. More evidence of the market fragmentation is that 50% of the $63 billion market is held by smaller chains and independent retailers. And we believe that through our Triangle Rewards Program, our capabilities and our scale, we are significantly advantaged. If you consider Sport Chek and Mark's, our total addressable market expands, and we have significant market share opportunities there as well. In the past, investors have questioned whether we have room to grow in the Canadian market. It's time to stop asking that question. We do have room to grow across all our banners. We will grow our market share and improve the omnichannel experience. We'll do this by evolving our assortments and investing in modernizing our store network. With this, we expect to grow CTR faster than it grew pre-pandemic, and we project a 4% annual growth rate on top of the growth rate we've just experienced. As we look at our assortment, we have built world-class capabilities that we will deploy to evolve our assortment to capture market share. The first is product development. Over the years, we have built an elite product development team, and that talented team has built an incredible stable of owned brands that now represents 39% of total sales at CTR. We have 11 brands, which generated over $100 million in sales last year, and we expect that number to reach 16 by 2025. These own brands have unique identities, rivaling national brands. They are brands consumers covet and stay loyal to over time. In other words, they are growth drivers. In fact, at CTR, our own brands portfolio has grown at a faster pace than national brands. Our data tells us that our triangle members are very engaged in our own brand portfolio. In the last year, almost 90% of our members have purchased at least 1 owned brand with 43% of members buying 5 or more brands. At the core of our success is the fact that we own the product development process, and we're in control of what we offer to Canadians. We are not just buying off the shelf. We build products specifically designed for life in Canada. We use insights from numerous customer data sets, including the 22,000 active product testers in our Tested for Life in Canada program and the 200,000 customers in our proprietary Canadian Tire panel. We take our knowledge of Canadians and build feature sets at every level of the price range architecture, good, better and best because we know which features are important to Canadians and which are extraneous and simply add cost. This is how we can both keep our assortments at accessible price points for Canadians while driving innovation that allows us to command higher prices for certain products. If you take barbecues as an example. At the good level, we've built an amazing barbecue at an accessible price point under Master Chef by including great features like a larger cook surface, so you can throw 20 burgers on the grill and purposely not including features like side burners or a fully enclosed base, which simply add cost. At the better level, we learned from our customer panels that customers crave convenience and, therefore, a barbeque that worked more like an oven. So under the Vida by PADERNO brand, we introduced a Canadian Tire patented technology that allows a customer to stat a temperature, and added a see-through window so end users can see their food as it cooks. And at the best level, we focused on delivering industry-leading durability and performance under the Vermont Castings brand. Here, we use cast iron lid construction, so it's built to last, and a deeper firebox to ensure optimal heat distribution so that your meal is cooked to your preference. This is what control of the product development process looks like, and we do this across a wide range of our assortment. Our own brands portfolio also gives us better control in the end-to-end supply chain. So we're not subject to national brands prioritizing other customers with respect to product flow. As Gregory will outline, we continue to invest and optimize an already world-class supply chain. This is critical when you compete in seasonal businesses where vendor and product delays can lead to missed micro seasons, customer let down and stifled growth. The second world-class capability that we will deploy to evolve our assortments to capture market share is brand building. And there is no one in Canada better at this than Canadian Tire. Between our world-class marketing engine, our wide distribution capabilities with a store network expanding coast-to-coast and our ability to showcase brands in our stores through inspirational merchandising, we are truly a brand-building powerhouse. So with strong product development and fantastic brand-building capabilities, our own brands portfolio delivers growth and profitability. And we see an opportunity to grow our penetration rate from 39% to over 45% through our better connected strategy. We will scale cornerstone brands like MotoMaster, Mastercraft and NOMA and significantly grow recent acquisitions like Paderno and Raleigh, and we will introduce Helly Hansen at CTR in the life jacket category. Having the brands our customers want, whether owned or national, at the right price points is also incredibly important as it is a huge trip driver and a strong driver of overall NPS. This is where we use our merchandising and curation expertise to position our own brands effectively alongside strong national brands such as Nespresso, Dyson, Michelin, DEWALT and SodaStream that also attract customers to our stores. In fact, we have become the retailer of choice for many of these brands. And as a result of our brand-building capabilities, we are a gateway retailer for national brands who aspire to grow their footprint in this country. It's a fact that no retailer in Canada sells more Dyson or SodaStream products than Canadian Tire. Given our product development and brand-building capabilities, we have a differentiated one-two punch of own brands and national brand assortments, which will continue to create demand and grow market share in Canada. The third world-class capability that we will deploy is our customer data. Susan spoke earlier about how we use data to drive customer engagement. And now I'm going to walk you through how we use data to evolve our assortments to drive growth. Although this is relevant to all categories, I'm going to use tires as an example because I'm so excited about the opportunity we have in front of us in this cornerstone category. As I mentioned earlier, while we have market share leadership, our market share upside potential is significant. Even with the word tire in our name, we still have over 80% market share to capture. Our customer data tells us this business is extremely important to the overall store. We know that Triangle members who shop Tire shop us almost 2.5x more than our average member, with basket sizes 35% larger making Tire customers high-spend customers overall. Our data tells us that driving market share gains in this category is a strategic imperative because we know that members who shop us for tires spend 80% more across our store network than those who don't. Through data, we also know that to service the wide range of needs of Canadians, we need unbeatable assortment breadth and to have those tires available when they need them with a seamless installation experience, especially when it's the season to change over your tires or buy new ones. With this knowledge in hand, we will evolve our assortment, including increasing our presence in truck and SUV tires. By expanding our presence in national brands like Michelin, Pirelli and Bridgestone and strengthening our own brand presence for these vehicles with MotoMaster, we will evolve our tire inventory deployment and optimize on-site storage to improve tire availability at stores. We will orient our auto base towards tire installation and deploy a digitized approach to appointments to improve our ability to serve customers quickly with less friction. And we will test a customer tire storage program to help the seasonal changeover requirements of Canadians who may not have the room to store their tires at home. We're excited about the actions we're going to take. And if you couple these with a more proactive engagement of our Triangle member base, we have a lot of opportunity to take market share. And as I said, tires is just one category. We will evolve similarly across our portfolio. For example, we are excited about what our data tells us about the pet category. It drives trip frequency to our stores as we grow it. And with our Petco partnership and the pet boutiques we have deployed to several stores, we know we have a proven blueprint to grow this business as we roll it out across the country. And we've seen similar trip driving behavior with our garden centers. So we'll be augmenting our assortments and creating a more consistent approach across our store network. And the benefit of customer data doesn't stop there. It is critical in curating the most appropriate local store assortment. Like all omnichannel retailers, we have a finite amount of space, which means we must showcase our breadth while emphasizing locally relevant categories to maximize our sales potential. Our customer data helps us to do this effectively. If you compare our stores in Grande Prairie and Liberty Village, you can see how this comes to life. Grande Prairie is a rural community in Alberta of 100,000 people. With a curated assortment specific to that market, we see a larger proportion of our business coming to us in our seasonal and playing divisions, specifically through outdoor furniture and outdoor recreation categories. Contrast that with our Liberty Village store, which is located in a densely populated sea of condominiums in Downtown Toronto. Given the small space in which these customers live, we over index in our Living division, specifically through a curated offering of small furniture, paint and kitchen products. The own brands penetration in both stores is very similar. We just get there through 2 different paths. There is a big difference in e-commerce penetration though, with Liberty Village over indexing. So we have invested in dedicated pickup areas, lockers and the dealer even has its own trucks for home delivery. Overall, the results from these stores are fantastic, and we've gained market share in these local communities. We've long had a wealth of data. Now we have the capabilities and tools to put this data in the hands of the dealers, which ensures we have an appropriately curated assortment in every store across the country. And this is just the beginning. Our dealers have always done a great job looking at how they allocate their space at the macro level. But now we have invested in an artificial intelligence-based tool that we call [ TETRAS ], allowing our dealers to optimize aisle by aisle in real time, 52 weeks of the year, which will create another unlock to help drive relevance and market share gains. Speaking of stores, I have left the best for last, our investment in our store network. Canadian Tire retail is still at the heart of the triangle, and it remains at the core of this business that started 100 years ago. It's where the strongest brand connection lives for most Canadians. And as Koryl mentioned, while our customers use digital, most still shop us in our stores. We understand that Canadians expect a seamless experience across store and digital. Being better connected to Canadians and being here to make life in Canada better must start where we're most present, alongside our dealers and customers at our stores and in local communities across the country. In an omnichannel world, customer control is crucial in providing the best shopping experience. By integrating our in-store and digital experiences, our model gives our customers that control. We will deliver a better in-store experience. For Canadian Tire, better means building bigger stores wherever we can and making significant layout changes to those stores where expansion isn't an option. Investing in bigger and enhanced stores will enable us to improve our omnichannel experience in 3 critical ways. First, we will showcase an appropriately localized and relevant assortment. As mentioned, we will use extensive data and artificial intelligence through [ TETRAS ] to localize the assortment. And we will evolve our product merchandising to showcase a relevant assortment in inspiring ways, enabling customers to touch and feel the product. Second, we will provide a frictionless same-day pickup experience. Central to providing customers with control is immediacy, particularly in need-it-now categories and products, which are a big part of our assortment. Products such as shovels and wiper fluid during snowstorms, wrenches for plumbing issues and propane for the barbecue are quick and easy to pick up at one of our 500 locations. And if you are an online shopper, we will be significantly improving our click-and-collect experience. On top of our recent investments that enable customers to buy online and pick up products quickly, our new store build-out will dedicate significant space, process improvements and technology investments to render the pickup experience even better, from rolling out lockers to nearly all our stores to the deployment of enhanced WiFi to enable all the features built into our mobile app experience. Third, we will improve inventory throughput capacity by moving towards well-distributed micro fulfillment hubs. A huge competitive advantage for us is the more than $2 billion worth of forward deployed inventory at our stores and the 12 million square feet of warehouse space attached to our 22 million square feet of retail floor space. The best way to provide immediacy, no matter how a customer chooses to shop, is to have product in close proximity to them, making it easily accessible and ready to be fulfilled. Equipping our stores with localized micro fulfillment capacity through infrastructure, process improvements and technology will modernize our stores, improve throughput capacity and provide the immediacy our customers want. To implement these significant changes, we developed a new store concept we call Concept Connect. Concept Connect will integrate our digital and physical presence with an enhanced omnichannel experience. It will help us continue to connect with Canadians wherever they live. We have launched this format in several communities across the country, including in Niagara Falls. Where in this market, we closed 2 small stores to build 1 bigger one with an enhanced omnichannel experience. We want to show you a sneak peek at a few elements to help bring Concept Connect to life. [Presentation]

What a great video, and the results we've seen at our Niagara Falls store have been amazing. Our sales have gone up. Our NPS scores have risen. And we have grown market share at the local level. With Concept Connect, we now have a proven blueprint to accelerate our store investments to replicate these positive results. And this is where our Triangle and extensive customer data can be extraordinarily powerful because we know where our best customers live, which points us to the largest opportunities at the local level. For example, if you take a market like Leaside, a residential community in Midtown Toronto, it's very affluent. It over indexes in the categories in which we compete. It over indexes in the customer segments we're interested in, like active families and its population is growing with densification of housing. But with our current store, we simply do not show up today with an appropriate brand experience. Expanding the size of the store with Concept Connect will change the perception of the brand in that market and allow us to improve our market share. And Leaside is but one of many market opportunities. We'll be rolling out this format across over 225 stores over the next 3 years. So 50% of the current retail square footage will be refreshed. We will increase our total square footage in the network by almost 10%. All of these changes will change the brand perception of CTR for over 60% of the Canadian population and provide us with significant market share growth opportunities to fuel our revenue growth. Our data has led us to create an enhanced version of Concept Connect that we call remarkable retail, which will be a larger augmented brand experience that will launch in Ottawa and Welland in 2022 and Calgary in 2025. These stores will be the best of the best that Canadian Tire has to offer, and we can't wait to show them off in the fall of this year. As Gregory will outline shortly, we know from experience that this investment in stores will deliver strong return on capital. You've heard a lot today about how we're going to invest and evolve to grow. We have significant brand trust and a lot of momentum. On top of everything you heard from Greg, Susan, Aayaz and Koryl, our path to better is simple. Better market share in a strong and growing market, propelling us to a better annual growth rate at 4% plus on top of the significant growth we've seen in the past 2 years. We will accomplish this through better assortments strengthened by our world-class capabilities, a better own brands portfolio, growing to over 45% penetration, better stores with an improved omnichannel experience by investing $1.2 billion in a larger, more modern store network and improving the brand perception for 60% of the Canadian population by 2025. I will now turn it over to Gregory to give you a view to how this CTR growth is a major component of our CTC growth strategy.

Thanks, TJ. I've always wanted to be the anchor leg that brings the relay home for the team, and I am thrilled to be doing that here today. In listening to our leadership team, I think we have a lot to be excited about. You heard from Susan about one of our most valuable assets, brand trust and how we are attracting new members with our Triangle Rewards program and scaling our personalization capabilities. Aayaz walked you through how we'll enhance our financial services offering, benefiting retail growth and customer engagement while taking the bank digital. Koryl demonstrated how digital is at the core of every customer interaction and how we'll provide customers with a more seamless transition between digital and the store. And finally, TJ outlined how we will deploy our world-class capabilities to evolve our assortment and how we invest in our stores to improve our customers' experience and grow market share. By building on our brand trust with customers and our reach across this country through our store network and financial services businesses, we have a blueprint for growth that will ensure our competitive positioning well into the future. Before I outline the results we expect to deliver, I'll spend a few minutes providing an overview of the strong base we have built. Prior to the pandemic, we had invested significantly to build some of the country's best owned brands and supply chain capabilities. We were strengthening digital and establishing Triangle Rewards as one of Canada's top retail loyalty programs. We implemented a series of operational efficiency initiatives. And as we have done for many years before, we were leveraging a remarkable set of assets, our retail store network and the unparalleled brand trust Greg and Susan referenced. This foundation set us up to deliver a much improved performance over the pandemic period. We saw increased customer engagement and market share gains, and e-commerce penetration reached record levels. Comparable sales were up 18% over a 2-year period. Retail margins improved and the bank delivered a strong financial performance. All of this contributed to a 2021 diluted EPS of $18.38 a share, up 46% compared to 2019 and a record level of return on invested capital at 13.6%. Our financial performance through the pandemic far surpassed our solid historical track record of close to 3% top line growth across our retail banners, high single-digit diluted EPS growth and ROIC below 10%. And through the pandemic, our strong free cash flow generation allowed us to continue funding growth investments across CTC and returning capital to shareholders. We started to change how we operate, embracing new found agility and making decisions much faster. Between our momentum and our capabilities, we have an enviable platform and a strong competitive position that will allow us to become even better. And in our pursuit of better, our better connected strategy is our springboard. Our path to better is designed to drive better top line growth, better profitability and of critical importance, better returns. I'll begin with the drivers of better top line growth. Our recent comparable sales growth has been led by customer demand as we showed up for customers with the right product mix and an ever-improving omnichannel experience. As we look ahead, better retail growth will come from a strong focus on the customer experience to drive increased spend per Triangle Rewards member and a path to engaging more members. And enhanced digital experience, investments in our store network with a significant investment in CTR and improving our already broad assortment, including expanding our own brands portfolio. Our expectation in building our investment plans and financial aspirations is that top line growth will benefit from the macroeconomic consumer environment. While inflation remains front and center, we do expect some easing over time. And ultimately, we expect underlying growth in our addressable market. Moving on to how our path to better will drive better profitability. Our retail gross margin has improved significantly, up 140 basis points since 2019. We will always experience the kind of quarter-to-quarter margin variation that can be impacted by changes in business mix and the seasonality of sales across banners. However, we expect to be able to continue balancing the headwinds and tailwinds to maintain our retail gross margin rate around the elevated levels we achieved in 2021 for several reasons. First, margins will continue to benefit from better marketing and promotional efficiency. Second, we will continue to use sophisticated demand elasticity modeling to balance pricing and volumes. And third, our continued focus on e-commerce profitability and a higher owned brand mix, driving higher product margin contribution, will offset any cost inflation or supply chain headwinds at the retail gross margin level. Our owned brands portfolio is critical to achieving strong product margins. We will scale existing owned brands, while growing new ones and increase our depth and breadth of products. This will lead to a stronger mix of owned brands at CTR and Sport Chek, both of which will grow from their current levels of 39% to 45% plus and 16% to 22% plus, respectively, by 2025. Mark's will also continue to benefit from its 66% owned brands penetration with brands such as Denver Hayes and WindRiver. We expect owned brands penetration at Mark's will remain slightly below current levels over the outlook period. Our owned brands business will drive significant growth with thousands of new products coming on stream by 2025, including the launch of [ Ford by Design ] at Sport Chek. Our exciting athleisure brand designed and developed completely in-house. Owned brands penetration has grown from 33% in 2016 to 38% in 2021, with product margin rates between 600 and 700 basis points higher relative to national brands. We expect owned brand sales to grow at a faster rate than overall sales, taking overall CTC penetration to more than 43%. We will also continue to drive a broader assortment of Helly Hansen products through our banners. On that note, I want to take a moment to address some of the questions we've received from our investors regarding our acquisition of the Helly Hansen business. Helly Hansen is executing on its growth strategy and is on track to triple the size of the business in Canada since 2018. It's now among our 10 largest owned brands in Canada, and we continue to see success with the introduction of new products across our Canadian banners. We expect Helly's growth to continue to outpace retail sales growth over the outlook period. We have a strong leadership team, and we see opportunity to grow market share in the United States. And we have recently concluded a small joint venture investment in China to tap into the luxury sports apparel market. Improvements in retail OpEx will continue to flow to the bottom line as we continue to achieve OpEx savings from our operational efficiency program. This, in combination with retail top line growth, will contribute to realizing operating leverage. Over the last 2 years, our teams have rallied to surpass our operational efficiency goals. By the end of last year, we achieved more than 100 basis points of benefit in our retail OpEx rate compared to 2019, even while absorbing some of the headwinds around supply chain as we ramped up our capabilities to support a bigger business. At the same time, our operational efficiency program has transformed the way we work, including transforming the organization with a focus on breaking down silos, making decisions faster and encouraging new mindsets and capabilities across the enterprise. I want to specifically call out how we transformed the way we work at banners like Sport Chek and Mark's, where we've improved labor productivity and delivered a better customer experience. Through operational efficiency, we've optimized e-commerce freight costs and reduce delivery times, ultimately lowering our fulfillment costs and improving our e-commerce profitability. And as we announced in November, we have identified an additional $100 million in cost savings, which we will achieve by investing in initiatives like robotic automation for picking product out of distribution centers and implementing a new transportation management system to reduce our freight costs. These initiatives and many others are well underway. Ultimately, better OpEx is about achieving our operational efficiency goals while recognizing that we are on an improvement journey, and we will continue to look for even more opportunities. Finally, before I move on to the drivers of better returns, I want to give you a view as to how our Financial Services business will contribute to driving profitability. Financial Services has historically driven more than 1/4 of our profit. And over the last 2 years, it has shown its resilience once again. Throughout the pandemic, we delivered significant profitability at the bank, albeit on a lower book of receivables. We've demonstrated strong credit risk management capabilities and the quality of the book improved. Now through our better connected strategy, we are shifting how we think about investing to better support the bank. The team at Financial Services is working closely with retail to grow the bank's receivables, while ensuring the best-in-class credit risk management practices remain in place. Aayaz spoke to the acquisition capabilities we're building, which will drive receivables growth. At the same time, these acquisition capabilities will drive synergies with our Retail segment, and we are confident this is the right time to make the investment for the long term. But of course, as we all realize with growth in new accounts comes the requirement to incur additional allowance expenses upfront. There is a significant retail customer base with whom we can accelerate the earning of Canadian Tire money by cross-selling our financial services. When I think about better at the bank, I think of a growing portfolio of loyal CTC customers, a more seamless integration between financial services and retail, better customer experiences and more financial services offerings. Combined, these make financial services and CTC even better. Last, but certainly not least, is how we will spend our capital and drive better profitability. We'll invest to deliver better returns and apply a rigorous approach to multiyear planning of our capital spend, which is aligned with the strategic priorities set out today. As we look to allocate approximately $3.4 billion in capital expenditures, we will focus on investments that will generate the strongest long-term returns for CTC. With that, let's dive into our capital spend priorities. Our first priority is devoting approximately $1.2 billion to update roughly 225 Canadian Tire stores and add new stores in a handful of underutilized markets in Ontario and Alberta by the end of 2025. This accelerated average capital spend on stores is a significant contributor to longer-term comp growth at CTR. Complementing this will be investments in personalized marketing and new in-store technology that drives an integrated, seamless omnichannel experience across all our banners. Our second priority is to allocate $675 million to improve our fulfillment capabilities. Throughout the pandemic, we've witnessed firsthand how critical a strong supply chain is for sourcing, securing and moving product to our stores. There's no doubt our rock solid supply chain bolstered our recent performance, and it's critical that we continue to strengthen this core capability to ensure that as we move increasing volumes of product, we can do so efficiently, cost-effectively and sustainably through our supply chain and on to our customers through ship to home, store fulfillment and as we extend endless aisle. We will strengthen our distribution capacity in Quebec and Ontario, including expanding our distribution center in the Montreal area and investing in our new 1 million square foot distribution center for Sport Chek and Mark's in the Greater Toronto area. This will be one of the most advanced deployments of automation in a Canadian distribution center and will drive e-commerce distribution efficiencies and add to our world-class supply chain and distribution capabilities. We will also expand our supply chain capabilities in Western Canada, including further development of the Ashcroft Terminal. Our third priority is an approximately $500 million investment to continue to modernize our business. We will focus on modernizing our legacy IT systems and moving to a more agile operating model, working with best-in-class partners to create one digital platform and implementing a new core banking system. And of course, we will continue to advance the sustainability of our operations, while protecting the strength of our brand through day-to-day investments in the retail network. We've been able to lower our greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and operations by 13.5% since 2011 when we first began reporting our sustainability targets. We will continue to improve returns to shareholders, building our impressive track record that has seen us return $4.8 billion to shareholders over the past 10 years, including more than $3 billion through share buybacks to our shareholders. We remain committed to paying dividends. 2021 marked our 12th consecutive dividend increase. Shareholders should expect us to grow our dividend and target a payout ratio over the longer term of 30% to 40% of annual earnings. We will continue to evaluate the use of buybacks on an annual basis over the period where we have excess cash, recognizing the role buybacks can play in a balanced capital allocation approach and their importance to a number of our shareholders. With regards to M&A, we will focus on accretive tuck-in acquisitions that build capabilities or own brand differentiators for our core retail business. In other words, we will keep an eye out for opportunities akin to our recent investment in the Ashcroft Terminal or the addition Party City business. We will look to fill category gaps, extend our customer platform or add to our valuable first-party data. Regardless of size, we will apply a critical lens to the accretion and returns these investments can generate. Finally, we will measure our progress and success on our path to better against the financial aspirations announced today. Our target of 4% plus in average annual comparable sales growth will generate healthier returns than in the past on our very substantial retail assets. We see retail ROIC as a critical measure of the health of the retail business and continue to believe it is the best measure of productivity of our asset base. We expect retail ROIC to be above 15%, a 500 basis point improvement compared to our previous target of 10%, with much of the improvement driven by CTR. We also expect to double our diluted EPS relative to pre-pandemic levels to $26 plus per share by 2025. And as previously discussed, we will be investing to make that happen with $3.4 billion of operating capital spend over the outlook period and 2022 spend expected to land between $825 million and $875 million. Even against record-setting retail performance in 2021, we expect to continue to deliver sales and EPS growth. Diluted EPS growth in the shorter term will reflect the time it takes to see the full operating leverage and growth from the upfront investments in our strategic initiatives and investments in growing our new account acquisition in Financial Services. Additionally, diluted EPS will benefit from operating leverage as we deliver on our operational efficiency initiatives. We expect EPS growth to accelerate over the outlook period from mid- to high single-digit growth in the early years to low to mid-teens growth by 2024 as the benefits from our investments in our Triangle Rewards program, store network, owned brands portfolio and digital retailing generate incremental sales. The investments we are making will better connect our assets to drive better results and deliver strong and sustainable returns to shareholders. We have set out the reasons to believe. We have a differentiated and resilient business, a strong, better connected strategy, a disciplined approach to capital allocation and clear financial aspirations. The tireless work of all of our team members and the trust our customers have in us is what makes CTC the company it is today. When I look at what's ahead, I see an opportunity to continue to grow the top line by connecting even more with our customer, an opportunity to continue to drive efficiency in our cost base, modernization efforts that will enable our competitive position going forward and an opportunity to invest in our business and allocate capital to our shareholders, given our recent performance and the remarkable inflection point that we have reached. I have never been prouder or more excited for the future of this great company. And I hope that today's presentations have made you feel the exact same way. And with that, let me hand it back to Greg.

Thank you, Gregory, and thank you to all of today's presenters. You've now heard from the leadership team on our ambitious plan for the next 3 to 5 years. I can't overstate my conviction for our better connected strategy, my confidence in our ability to achieve everything you just heard from the team or my belief in our newly articulated financial aspirations. But as it's been famously said, structure follows strategy but culture eats strategy for breakfast. I mentioned earlier that our fifth strategic pillar focuses on people and enablers. We will change the way we work to develop people, capabilities and systems to deliver our strategy. We built this fifth pillar directly into our strategy because it's foundational. Without it, the other 4 will crumble. Being better for our customers, our communities and our investors requires that we embrace new, better ways of working. Our capabilities and systems as well as our talent are at the core of this effort. We are building a culture of connection at CTC. To do this requires shared vision. It requires a focus on collective as opposed to individual goals, collaboration instead of competition and working horizontally instead of within a rigid hierarchy. We know employee engagement drives performance. In addition to unveiling our evolved brand purpose to our internal team in early February, we also announced our 5 core values to better define who we are and how we behave. Our 5 core values are: we are innovators and entrepreneurs at our core; outcomes drive us; inclusion is a must; we're stronger together; and we take personal responsibility. These core values were not created in a silo. They were born out of the communications that kept our teams moving forward over the last 2 years, the axioms that enabled us to remain connected at a time of rampant disconnection. They are the words that resonate with our teams and define who we are and who we can be when we're at our best and they serve to unlock our strategy. In other words, if our brand purposes are North Star, our core values are our compass, ensuring we all keep rowing in the same direction. We're doing the work to build the culture we not only want but need if we're to achieve our ambitious goals. And as a result, we have entered our centennial year with an energized, proud team who are inspired to be better. Our culture of connection exists beyond the walls of our corporate offices. It extends to our associate dealers as well. I know that in the past, there have been questions about the business relationship with our dealers and the dealer model. Specifically, with respect to how it is structured and its potential impact on our agility. There are some investors who believe that the dealers are an impediment to our growth. We know it to be the opposite. The dealers are, in fact, a catalyst for our growth. There has long been a misperception around our business model with the dealers. And today, I want to put any lingering apprehension to rest once and for all. Shortly before the onset of the pandemic, we announced to The Street that we had signed a new dealer contract that would carry us to the end of 2029. The spirit of the agreement was to become more future-focused, align ourselves to work more closely as partners in business and ensure that both the corporation and dealers would grow their earnings in proportion to one another. This agreement, in conjunction with the positive working relationship we have with our dealers, has allowed us to quickly adapt to the urgent needs of the market during these unprecedented times. Much of our recent success is a testament to the ongoing collaboration between the dealers and the corporation. It was the dealers who embraced and rolled out curbside pickup, a project that should have taken months, in a matter of days. Today, the majority of our online click and collect orders can now be picked up in 2 hours or less. This is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were mere months ago, and we remain focused on getting better. During the crisis, given high levels of consumer demand and inventory scarcity, we wanted the enterprise to be motivated to buy product, have adequate stock and flow the inventory through to the customer when it was needed. And in order to achieve this, we eliminated our wholesale variable pricing model, which had previously led to inconsistent buying behaviors by the dealers and admittedly have driven operational inefficiencies. In making this change, we've assured dealers that they will always get our best wholesale pricing and don't have to guess as to whether there might be a better product cost down the line. As a result, our inventory now flows much more smoothly and dealers are squarely focused on having stock for their customers at the right time as opposed to having to manage around the timing of the buy side of our business. This was a big change for us. That was a decades-long business process and a fundamental tenet of our working commercial relationship. Although we had just put ink to our commercial agreement days before the crisis began, we worked together in good faith to adjust and ensure our model adapted to new realities in our business. This price assurance program is now part of our new commercial dealer agreement. It's a change that proves that the dealer model is in itself agile and adaptable, and speaks to the spirit of partnership and the trust that exists in our relationship. We now have a business model that is more connected and supports making life in Canada better for our customers by keeping them at the heart of all decision making. So if you thought of Canadian Tire retail as a wholesaler-based business model, you need to change your perspective because it's now an integrated customer model. The corporation and the dealers invest together. We grow together. We've also been asked who bears the financial burden of e-commerce? And our answer is that it doesn't matter. Through the investor perception study I referenced earlier, we heard suggestions that the economic model for our e-commerce business with the dealers was a bit of a mystery. I'll start by saying there is no secret here. We collectively increase our sales and our profits when we execute omnichannel together. Our biggest advantage for winning at omnichannel are our stores and our forward deployed inventory. And given this, our model fulfills e-commerce demand from the store, just like a traditional bricks-and-mortar transaction. From a channel economic standpoint, a click-and-collect order is higher touch when it comes to store labor, but the average sale is almost twice that of a standard bricks-and-mortar transaction, which has an average basket size of almost $70. And 20% of these click-and-collect transactions lead to an additional in-store sale. So when you put it all together, click-and-collect economics are quite strong. For a curbside order, there are minimal attachment sales, but the basket size is similar to those of click-and-collect orders. And when it comes to home delivery, the average basket size is 2.3x bigger than a standard in-store basket. Like curbside, there's minimal opportunity for in-store attachment sales and the freight is paid for by the customer. If we decide to offer discounted delivery instead of product discounting as a demand driver, that's a shared expense between the corporation of the dealers because it works just like a marketing discount. The most important thing to understand is that we are not seeing any cannibalization between our e-commerce and traditional retail channels because at the individual customer level, the same customer uses both channels. Factors like urgency, size of product and available time all play a role in determining which channel the customer chooses. And as Susan pointed out, a customer that engages with us in both channels is a highly engaged customer. The dealers embrace this notion and fully understand that it's critical to achieving their goal of successfully fulfilling all of our customer needs. I've never been shy about the fact that I'm a huge supporter of our dealer model. It works for a myriad of reasons. And if our business is threatened in any way, we have 500 committed entrepreneurs who will do whatever it takes to compete and win, and that includes making significant changes whenever needed. We are focused on being better for the customer. And the dealers understand that by connecting our store and digital experience, we can drive greater value for both of us. I can tell you that the dealers are all in on this strategy, along with our shared belief that our business is stronger when we truly connect to each other and the communities in which we operate. Before I close, I want to take a moment to talk about our fourth strategic pillar and our environmental, social and governance strategy. I know many of you are eager to hear the details of these plans, and we are eager to share them with you later this year. We're still honing the strategy, and we cannot and will not rush it to market. This is simply too important. Our ESG strategy is not a box-checking exercise. We want to get it right to ensure it's driving shared value and achieving our brand purpose of making life in Canada better for today and tomorrow, and we're well on our way. There should be no question that we step up for our communities. And through our Jumpstart Charity, we are on track to surpass 3 million kids helped this year. You've heard me outline the progress we've made on our sustainability efforts. Corporate Knights once again named us among the most sustainable retailers in Canada, and we were listed as one of its global 100 most sustainable corporations. We are now focused on bringing all of our environmental and social initiatives together into an integrated ESG strategy. We have established an executive leadership counsel that brings many leaders together as well as a brand and corporate responsibility committee at the Board level to oversee our ESG efforts. We are doing great work. And as we move forward, we're going to be bolder when it comes to how we talk about the impact we have on this country, from the number of jobs we provide to our sustainability efforts and every community initiative in between. Later in the year, we'll be releasing our first ever ESG report, which will serve as a singular corporate point of view on all ESG topics, including those related to people and community, the environment, responsible sourcing and governments. I'll close by saying that I listen to all the rhetoric in the markets today. I hear the focus shifting from growth to value, high multiples to earnings. What I can tell you is that I stand before today with clear convictions and a profound understanding of how together our teams will make this company and life in Canada better. We have a management team that understands the customer and has demonstrated we can execute in the most difficult times, a team that added $2.4 billion in retail sales and over a $500 million in pretax income over the last 2 years. A growth rate that is remarkable and in the past has taken us 6 and 8 years, respectively, to achieve. A team who knows that executing our better connected strategy requires us to think and work together in new ways, something we've learned how to do really well over these past 2 years. We will need to operate in an agile manner, embracing a digital-first mindset and partnering to achieve scale and unleash our collective expertise. We will work in ways that support innovation, speed and creativity, all in service of being here to make life in Canada better for all our stakeholders. We are committed to a balanced approach to capital. We're stepping up and investing to be better in our core business. This is our priority. In other words, we know where we're going, and we're making bold moves to get there. We know it's up to us, and we're ready. We're a strong company, and we're focused on getting better for our customers, our communities, our team members and our investors. For 100 years, Canadian Tire has been here, not simply to compete, but to win in the world of retail. And trust me, we're just getting started. [Break]

Once again, welcome, and thanks for joining us today for CTC's 2022 Investor Day. We're delighted to have a chance to take questions around the strategy and financial aspirations you heard out earlier this morning. We have around 45 minutes set aside now to take your questions. We'll try to cover as many as we can from the phone lines and the webcast. But before we get started on the Q&A, I'd like to hand over to Greg Hicks for a quick intro.

Thanks, Karen, and thank you for us today. We're very much looking forward to hearing and answering your questions. But before we do, I want to address something that I have no doubt is on everyone's mind right now, the conflict in Ukraine. Russia's invasion of the sovereign nation is tragic and deeply concerning. And Canadian Tire Corporation stands with all of those impacted by the violence. As you may know, we have temporarily paused our Helly Hansen operations in Russia, including its retail stores, e-commerce site and product shipments. During this time, we will continue to support and pay our employees. We are committed to helping those impacted by the conflict, and as a start we've made $200,000 donation to the Red Cross' Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal. And in keeping with our brand purpose of being here to make life in Canada better, we've committed up to $500,000 to support the thousands of refugees who will soon be arriving in Canada. There's no question we continue to live in stressful times, in facing challenges that are beyond our control, Canadian Tire Corporation will do what we can to support those in need. And now I'll turn it over to Karen to open up the Q&A.

Thanks, Greg. We have a few questions that we would like to start with, that have come in ahead of today. Just going back to the Russia, Ukraine situation again. Can you tell us how you see it impacting the business going forward?

Sure. Thanks for the question. Why don't I take that one. I do believe, Karen, that it's good for us to hit this head on and early. It's such a fast-moving and dynamic situation. I'll start with a fast follow up to my opening remarks and let you know that Russian Helly Hanson operations are not a material part of Helly nor CTC's business. But I think the real question being asked is how might the conflict impact the broader economy and our business over the long-term, including our ability to achieve the financial aspirations we've set out today. Frankly, as I know you can all appreciate, it's still too early to tell how this conflict will evolve and how it will impact the world, including potential impacts on things like interest rates, oil and commodity prices and overall consumer confidence in Canada. I would, though, like to reemphasize the time frame for our aspirations. They are our long-term goals for the next 4 years. We're confident we have selected the right metrics to drive this business forward, targeting an appropriate and achievable level of growth. Regardless of the macro and geopolitical environment, our vision remains the same, and that's to make life in Canada better. And we're confident that the implementation of this vision will lead to long-term profitable growth for Canadian Tire. We're also confident that we're making the right investments today to set the business up for success and for growth. The investments we're making in our capabilities from supply chain to IT, store and customer experience will make us stronger and more agile no matter what the future looks like for the Canadian economy. And while it's too early to tell how the current events may impact our business in the short term, we've proven how resilient we can be during challenging times. And if we were to head into a more challenging economic backdrop, we have better customer data, assortment architecture, demand and margin management disciplines, a better cost structure and a stronger bond of trust with Canadians than we have ever had. So we're simply better built for resilience.

Thanks, Greg. We'd like to now go and take a live question from the phone lines. So we'll start with Irene Nattel at RBC Capital Markets.

So my question is the following. You provided an awful lot of information, and thank you for all of that. I think what we're all struggling with is how to put all of these building blocks together to take us from where we are today to that $26 EPS target and the 15% retail ROIC. And wondering if you could lay it out perhaps a little bit more clearly. So however you want to do it, is it X percent comes from the rising revenue, Y percent comes from better margin cover? Just if there's a -- or even just stack them for us so that we understand what the critical pieces are.

Sure. Thanks, Irene. I'll just kick it off and then maybe I'll hand to Gregory. We're glad that you felt like we put a lot of information out there. That's exactly what we were intending to do. We feel really confident and bullish about our business. And the right thing for us to be doing is to be investing in the core of this business to position it for long-term growth. But why don't I hand it over to Gregory, and we can unpack a little bit on the drivers for you in a little bit more detail.

Sure. Thanks, Greg, and good afternoon or maybe good morning, Irene. I'm not sure where you are, what time you are exactly. But anyway, to answer your question, I would take it apart in a few different components and pieces is the way that I think about this. I would start off around revenue, margin and OpEx. So in my mind, when you heard kind of the presenters talk around our comp number of 4%-plus growth, hopefully, you took from that, that we have a very compelling path to that 4% growth. And I could take you speaker by speaker. I could start with Susan, and talk about what's going on as it relates to personalization. I could take apart what Susan said around Triangle Select program, our Triangle Rewards in general, improving our engagement levels. Through to Koryl and Aayaz on -- Aayaz talked about even contributing more new accounts in the bank that would help contribute more to top line retail sales. And I think if you heard Koryl talk, he mentioned about endless aisle and frankly, just a better customer experience on our digital websites as well, kind of culminating in TJ's comments around own brands, addressable market growth and continuing to take market share. So I think that's kind of our road map in my mind around why we are very confident in the kind of the 4%-plus growth in our comp sales numbers. I think you saw what I tried to do in my presentation was dissect a little bit around margin rates and talk then about OpEx rates. On the margin rate side, I've said this, I think, the last year every quarter, so you'll forgive me for saying it again. I think the way to look at margins and OpEx rates is on a long-term basis. There's always going to be noise on a quarter-by-quarter basis as we have changing business mix or some seasonality issues, if you will. But if I look at margin, our margin rate has improved by 140 basis points -- our retail gross margin rate by 140 basis points compared to 2019. And we see lots of opportunities. There's no doubt there's some headwinds coming our way in terms of inflationary pressures and supply chain, but we feel very opportunistic around kind of the tailwinds that we have. Again, personalization and marketing efficiency has improved and is going to keep improving and help secure our margin rates over the longer term. And I frankly point to owned brands. And I'm really excited about the growth potential in owned brands to continue to add more value to the enterprise. And then I go to the OpEx side of things. And I think you're aware that we've achieved our first $200 million in the operational efficiency program, and we signed up for another $100 million. So we're going to continue to see retail operating leverage over the outlook period. So in my mind, pardon the expression, but we're punching all the keys on the keyboard, 4% top line, margin rate essentially being held over the outlook period off of a great growth rate versus 2019 and continuing leverage in our OpEx rate over the outlook period. And all of that contributes to the growth you've mentioned in bottom line and also ROIC. So that's how I would answer your question, Irene. And thank you very much for it.

All right. We will now go back to the webcast. Our next question that was submitted is about the market is discounting your multiple relative to peers. And you've outlined a plan that involves a large CapEx requirement, larger than historical investment levels. So why do you see this as the best use of capital right now?

Well, thanks for the question. Why don't I take that one? I mean, look, here's the way I think about it. Quite frankly, in the few years pre-pandemic, our TSR was not where we expected to be. Our compressed multiple offset any real value created by our earnings expansion. And we think this was driven by an uncertainty with respect to our ability to create long-term value. So the combination of mix performance in the retail segment, our stagnant ROIC and a lack of clarity around future growth prospects put downward pressure on our multiple. So we stand here today with clarity around where and how we will drive growth and strong returns going forward to Gregory's comments. We're being declarative around the fact that we need a strong, healthy core business that can compete going forward. And we're lining up our capital allocation to the strategic priorities you heard today in a much more meaningful and focused way. I think we're remedying underinvestment in our core to defend against competitive threats and position our business to expand our addressable market and take greater share of the consumer's wallet. And I think of critical importance is that a stronger core business enables stronger supporting businesses. The strategy that you heard today provides for a better derived platform value from CTFS. And the magnification of the importance of the store in this strategy will have meaningful positive impact for CT REIT. Our earnings expansion through the crisis really enable us to invest more capital to improve the long-term value creation potential in the core business and continue to allocate capital to shareholders in the form of both share repurchases and dividends. I guess I'd close this question, Karen, by saying that we also recognize that greater transparency is a part of the requirement here for the market to understand and believe in our sustained competitive advantage. And we hope you feel like we've worked hard to deliver on this, not just today, but hopefully over the course of the last couple of years. And I think coming out of today, you should have a clear understanding of where we're focused. And we're committed to being as transparent as we can going forward. So you can understand the progress that we're making here against the strategy that you heard from the team today.

Thanks, Greg. We're going to go back to the audio lines. And we have Brian Morrison of TD Securities on the line. So Brian, we're hoping you can hear us. Please go ahead.

Okay. I guess my first question is probably directed to Susan. So you're getting rave reviews from the people I've talked to. I'm hoping you might be able to share some details on your targets for membership. Where is the above-average projections spending coming in from by banners? Is it over-indexed to Canadian Tire? And is this an above-average income demographic?

Thanks for the question, Brian. I love the fact that it's getting rave reviews. So yes, why don't we hand that one over to Susan? Thanks for the question.

Yes. Thanks, Brian. I love that, too. So thanks. So with respect to measurement on the program, I'll start by saying that we are absolutely, based on the fact that we can, measuring everything. We have implemented so many customer metrics into our business the way we run it. Everything from number of active customers we want to have, how big we want to grow the program, scan rate at store, credit card customer acquisition, so we have a number of metrics built into not just my plan but the plan of everyone at this table. So we're highly focused on using the customer data we have to really measure our business in a different way. But the real metric we've been looking at candidly is loyalty as a percent of sales. It's the most critical metric for us. It's the one that is the best measure of our customer engagement across sort of all of those 5 levers I talked about. And truthfully, it's the one that drives the most action in the way we want it to for the company. So it drives the types of behaviors that you would see in the way we assort our business, the way we think about our real estate decisions, the way we think about marketing. So we absolutely have a ton of metrics that we're using based on customer data, but the real metric we're focused on is loyalty as a percent of sales. And we do intend to grow that meaningfully between now and the outlook, up north of 63%, and we just think we're just getting started, frankly.

I would just add that we believe so wholeheartedly in that metric being critically important for the long term and driving this business strategy forward that we've adjusted our long-term incentive plan for our -- all of our senior leaders, whereby loyalty as a percentage of sales is now a meaningful metric in terms of driving long-term compensation for executives. So absolutely would have focused on that metric.

Brian, I hope that answers your question.

Yes.

Okay. So going to the webcast again, we have another question for Susan again around personalization. So if we go to the question, so given the lower frequency of shopping at a general merchandise retailer or an apparel retailer versus someone like a grocer, Susan, how successful can CTC be in sort of really getting actionable data insights for personalized offers?

Yes. Again, we're working on kind of passing the baton around here. So I'll -- I would just say that Canadian Tire is so unique in that we have -- we don't have any one or a few categories that drive tremendous amount of purchase frequency at the category level. It's the breadth of categories that we have that draws a customer in multiple times. But Susan is so close to this, and it's a great question. Thank you. Why don't you take it from here?

Yes, that's great. So I'm going to just hit the question right on. The simple answer is we're very successful at using the data we have to draw insights that can enable personalization. As I mentioned in my presentation, we're at $1.4 billion in associated sales on our one-to-one program. And we're just getting started. So yes, frequency is important. It's a very nice thing to have in the world of data analytics. And as Greg pointed out, we do have frequency. It comes to us in a different way through the multiple banners and categories that we have, 311 banners. And that's really the power in our connected platform that Greg talked about. The idea that we can drive our customers across banners, across channels, that ability to say, I understand what a customer bought here and use our predictive analytics to say we think they might also purchase something here. And so we're using every investment we've made, our capabilities from a data analytics perspective to really understand what customers want and drive them through those engagement levers. And we've proven that we can. I mentioned that our best members visit us 35 times a year. I mean, that's pretty high frequency. So we feel very good about our chances. And we believe everything we've done up until now is just the beginning, and we've got way more runway on that.

Okay. Thanks, Susan. Our next question is from Peter Sklar from BMO Capital Markets. So -- and it's a question on endless aisle. So you talked about vendors signing up for drop ship and endless aisle. How do you scale the endless aisle opportunity? And how do you get your dealers on board?

So thanks for the message, Peter, or the question, Peter. Why don't we have Koryl start with the endless aisle capability? And then we'll pass it to TJ to give the dealer perspective on this.

Yes. Thanks for the question. It starts with total addressable market. Just like you heard TJ say, this is a chance for us to take a non-inventory risk position to understand where our brand and our brand trust can extend. It doesn't matter if it's accentuating a complementary category or going into new white space. Endless aisle has a large and broad service offering from all of our drop ship partners. And we're not doing it with just one. We found a couple of the best-in-breed partners out there, and we're working with both of them to make sure that we can scale this. My personal goal is to double and then redouble the amount of SKUs that we're adding for Canadian Tire and see similar metrics on both Mark's and Sport Chek. It's early days for us, but it's growing very, very quickly. But again, endless aisle isn't just for the sake of online sales. We get online sales, that's great. Then we actually ship to the customer directly or to the store and then hopefully, we get attachment rate. But the other thing is the learning. How many categories are we not in today because we're worried about our precious finite real estate or square footage? Or is there room in this aisle? Can we go into that category? It's a matter of finding those categories where there's a lot of opportunity and efficiency. This can be done at the individual product level for a flyer opportunity. This can be a whole category that we need to add just to certain stores in certain regions. So I'm incredibly bullish not just for endless aisle as a digital capability but our learning in -- low-risk learning and proving ground, honestly, for the company going forward.

Yes. Thanks, Koryl. And thanks, Peter, for the question. With respect to the dealers, they like endless aisle for the same reasons we do. It allows us an opportunity to expand our offering and grow market share as well as expand the total addressable market. And when you think about the dealers in our relationship, I've been here 18 years, and we have never had more economic or strategic intent congruence than we have today. These dealers across the country are all in on this strategy, and endless aisle is just one component. If you unpack everything you heard today, whether it be the Triangle engagement with our credit card, the investment in stores, the migration we're making with respect to creating a better omni-channel experience, these folks across the country are proud entrepreneurs, and they are all in on this strategy. And they're going to be a force multiplier on our strategy and a catalyst, exactly what Greg said earlier. So thanks for that question because I think it's very important.

Thanks, TJ. So our next question is actually from Peter Sklar of BMO Capital Markets. So Peter, I believe we have you on the line now, and you can hear us. Please go ahead.

You do have me now, Karen. That was a good question though. I'm happy to take credit for it, but I'll now give you my real question. So Greg, you've talked a lot today about the virtual circle, which involves personalization, customer engagement, the reward, which is Canadian Tire Money. I'm just wondering, like in the grocery industry, like do CPG suppliers fund a lot of these endeavors? They'll fund some promotions, and they'll fund when the promotions involve a reward. And I'm just wondering how it works in your business with your suppliers. Obviously, in your household brands, and that's not going to be the case. But when you're dealing with national branded suppliers, how are they involved in these programs? And then the second part of my question is, I mean, everything you're talking about today, the circle, it was very complex. Like how do you measure returns? So -- like how do you know that you're getting a return on Canadian Tire Money? And how do you know you're getting a return when it's integrated with promotions? Is it all measurable?

Sure, Peter. Thanks. Why don't I take the first part of the question around CPG and brands. And Gregory, maybe you want to take the second on returns. So I think you've heard me say before, we're really focused on making sure the connected system works today for our banners. And so over the course of the last 2 or 3 years, we've extended the amount of banner participation in our Triangle program. Susan talked today about the amount of registration and 14 million people in our owned audience, which really provides us that digital audience by which we could monetize in a CPG-type example. For us, it's about the type of capabilities and business processes and technology that allow us to do it really well first with our brands, across our banners, across the ecosystem. . But for sure, we see opportunity to monetize this going forward. We've got a small G&A investment in a Triangle media services program. We would expect that over time to become more meaningful. I wouldn't, Peter, wouldn't be thinking about if there's any materiality in that in the current outlook period, but we do see great opportunity. And I would say we're test and learning with a couple of brands in Sport Chek, big brand players and also Canadian Tire, whereby we can give them access to a digital audience. We can measure return. And one of the biggest benefits that we have relative to social media investments for CPG companies is we can truly provide them a perspective around the return on an omni-channel basis. It's not just digital. So we can turn on an ad or an engagement with a SodaStream or a Nike or whomever and give them a very good perspective around how that offer may have incented different channel behavior. And that, to us, we believe, to be one of the biggest benefits for us and differentiators for a potential media services monetization. Let me stop there on the first part, and we'll hand it over to Gregory on how we think about the returns here.

Thanks, Greg, and thanks for the question, Peter. Greg actually did a good job talking about the returns and the measurability of all of these initiatives. Peter, what I would start with is I give you the bank as an example. The bank has the ability to test and learn and have had that, frankly, since the inception of the bank. And really, what Susan and team have been on the journey in the last little while is on that -- having that same sense of being able to measure initiatives and promotions as they move forward. So we're very comfortable and confident in our ability to run test and learn ourselves, as Greg alluded to. And I'd tell you, there's more PhDs and data scientists than I recall when I first started at Canadian Tire 28 years ago. I'll tell you that. So but seriously, we're very confident in our ability to kind of have multiple test cells out and precisely measure returns against these test cells and run multiple tests at the same time. So we're really comfortable with our ability to measure this. And I think that's really a plus, frankly, to the marketing team as they've evolved us to this more personalized direct marketing approach and with all this first-party data that we have that can really truly enable us to answer the question you're specifically asking.

Okay. Thank you, Gregory. Thanks, Peter, for the questions. We have another question from one -- from the web platform from one of our analysts. With rising inflation and concerns around recession, can you walk through how you balance the heightened risk of offering extensions around your financial services offerings?

Sure. Why don't I start, and I'll pass it over to Aayaz. I think I'd go back to the statement that I made to kick off around the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As early as even a few weeks ago, we were believing that the inflation that we were dealing with was driven by more of supply-side economics. And we sit here 4 weeks later in the present, and we're staring down a potential inflation scenario that's driven by demand. So very uncertain scenario, but one of the things that we've certainly learned more about our business in the last couple of years is our ability to deal with uncertainty and unbelievable resilience, which extends to every part of our portfolio inclusive of CTFS. But why don't I ask Aayaz to comment on that resiliency, specifically in the bank?

Yes. Thanks, Greg. I want to pick up on that theme of resiliency. And what has worked for CTFS for the past 20 years is still going to be a core facet of how we operate moving forward. And so at the center of all that is our competencies, skills, teams and models in credit risk and credit adjudication. And with the growth we're looking to propel the business with, with digital and our transformation journey, when you combine this world-class capability in risk management and based on my experience, I'm really truly impressed by what the team has developed now. And I believe that it's second to none on the street. We can battle the best on Bay Street. You combine that with the data we now have as well as going digital, you pull that together and now we can actually go and target the customers that we believe are best for our portfolio and best for our portfolio from multiple lenses, a spend perspective, obviously, a risk perspective and a profitability perspective. So I think irrelevant of what economic cycle we are in, I'm really comfortable given where we are today in our core competencies that we'll continue to be resilient in the future with our plans for growth.

We're going to go back to the phone lines. We have a question from Vishal Shreedhar of National Bank. Vishal?

I was hoping you could provide me with a review of some of your recent deals like Party City, Helly, Paderno, Raleigh, so on and so forth. Have these broadly or generally hit these -- your return thresholds? And what would a future tuck-in acquisition look like? Or is Tire looking for brands? Are they looking for retailers? Are they looking for international exposure? Any color would be appreciated.

Sure. Thanks for the question, Vishal. I'll start, and maybe I'll again hand it over to Gregory here. Other end is on the opposite ends of the table. I'll start with -- why don't I go back to the investor perception study, Vishal. I talked about capital allocation being one of the 3 primary components of feedback that we received in the investor perception study. And hopefully, you've got a real good sense in terms of where we're focusing our capital on a go-forward basis. What I didn't tell you is the investor perception study would have suggested a little bit of concern around the capital allocation, specifically to Helly Hansen and to Party City on the acquisition front. If I start with Party City, there was method to the madness in terms of providing you maybe -- I was going to say double click, it might have been a triple click on Party City in our Q4 release. We are incredibly happy with what we're seeing in Party City, and it's lining up like bang on with what our investment thesis was, which was about broadening our appeal for engagement and having Party City be one of those large engagement drivers that Susan talked about in her presentation this morning. We're seeing really good take-up of offers. We're seeing lots of congruence between a CTR shopper and a Party City shopper. We're really feeling good about the fact that the dealers have taken over that business model and are running those stores. They're challenging the market with their entrepreneurial flair in the exact way that we thought they would. And we're just getting started in terms of where we think we could take that business from an engagement and a top line standpoint. Helly Hansen is a really strong brand and a great business. And we're feeling very good, again, about what we're doing to deliver on the primary thesis in that acquisition, which was to differentiate our core business. And Gregory talked about the fact that we've got a plan now to triple the business and this outlook since we took over the business in 2018 and some neat opportunities going forward. It's -- we have a fantastic team led by a really strong new CEO, Carrie Ask, who's getting her arms around the business and just see tremendous opportunity. So feeling really good about those 2 larger acquisitions. There's not a brand that we've acquired and tucked into our owned brands portfolio that we're not happy with. We really have kind of a playbook here in terms of how to acquire, put a multiyear product development road map in place and really execute and take control of the shelf and advertise digitally. And we've got more to come, as you heard, with respect to where we're driving penetration rates. So any of those brand acquisitions have been absolutely fantastically accretive and right up our alley in terms of differentiation for the long term as well. So that's how we think about the historical M&A activity that we've done. And why don't I pass it over to Gregory and get a view on how we're thinking about it going forward.

To be honest, I'm not sure I could say anything better around what we're thinking about as we move forward versus bring you back to what Greg just talked about in the past. There's lots of opportunities we always look at, at Canadian Tire. But I come back to the core tenets of what are -- what's important to us right now, if I think about M&A. And I tried to highlight some of those in my remarks in my scripts. First and foremost, I would just anchor on the fact it's around supporting the core retail business. That would be the first thing I'd want to reinforce at this point in time. And then the other one is we talked about, it could be capabilities. It could be owned brands differentiation. We really like what Party City brought to us in terms of first-party data as well. So all of these things strengthened our core retail business. And I, Vishal, would suggest that's what we're going to be focused on as we're moving forward is things that could be owned brands that we can continue to tuck in or other capabilities. I look at Ashcroft again, as an example. So we think there's a pretty exciting road map ahead of us to kind of build all those out. But I'll say it again, focus on the core retail business would be what our emphasis is at this point in time.

Thanks, Gregory. That's a great segue to our next question, which came off the platform, which is around Concept Connect and our investments in the core business, the core retail CTR business. So the question would be, how are you deciding where to put Concept Connect stores? And what returns are you expecting?

Okay, why don't I start and I'll hand it over to TJ. I think I'd start with the fact that we're -- we've developed this concept and our expectation in terms of growth in returns from a position of great strength. When we look historically at the envelope of capital that we've allocated to an investment in a rollout of a store design format over the course of the last 3 or 4 years, the return for that envelope of capital is extremely positive. We're feeling really good about our ability to replicate that historical return profile. And the concept has just gotten better, and we feel like we're ready to roll. So maybe with that as a little bit of context, I'll hand it over to TJ.

Yes. Thanks, Greg. And I think that is a great place to start. And the way we were able to get those returns over the last couple of years, we've always used data to decide where we're going to locate stores and the types of interventions we're going to put forward. But my goodness, in the last couple of years, the amount of data and data scientists we've thrown at this particular topic is staggering. And we look at a bunch of different things, right? We look at what kind of -- 3 big things: what kind of market attractiveness is there, so that looks at population, the demographics of a local market; what kind of high-value customer base do we have there, a bunch of things to really decide which ones are the most attractive markets. Second is we analyze a lot of data to decide which intervention type we would like to do in a particular market. And we look at things like store productivity and labor throughput. And then third, in multi-store markets, we look at things like the interaction between a store and other stores in a broader multi-store market. And then when you look at throwing all that data science against those 3 topics, we also have to sprinkle in a little bit of practicality and a little bit of art into it. So the land availability, land affordability and even locations within local markets. And when you look at all of that, if you take Leaside as an example, which I talked about in my presentation, amazing market, growing very strong demographically. And we have a lot of upside opportunity to get share of wallet there, but our store is very productive and very tight and we need a bigger store to capture market share in that market. So that gives you kind of an example of how we do it. And we're really busy right now. Our real estate folks are -- with 225 on the horizon, they're very busy. I have chatted with a member of the team this morning, and we're really excited about deploying this kind of investment in our stores as we go forward.

Thanks, TJ. We're going to go back to Brian Morrison of TD Securities, I believe, online or via the web platform. Brian, please go ahead. Okay. We'll go to a question from the web platform. I think we've just got a question coming through via the web platform. Typically, your surplus free cash flow after dividends is allocated to your NCIB. In your base case growth outlook, should we expect share buybacks to be paused? And if your 2025 EPS CAGR is 8.5%, then with EPS growth rates mid to high teens in the later years, is your 25 -- is your $26 EPS target on the conservative side?

So there's a lot there.

There's a lot there.

There's a lot there, but I know Gregory is probably chopping it a bit to get in on this, especially around the notion of pausing our share buybacks. So why don't I hand it over to Gregory?

That's right. Maybe I can use this as an opportunity to maybe bring it up a level on just capital allocation. And I promise I'll do the best I can to get to these component questions. If we miss something, whoever submitted the question, feel free to get back to our IR folks, and we'll figure it out because there was a lot there, to be candid. So I want to start because we haven't been declared, I don't think, Greg and I, around our thoughts on capital allocation. And we really like the approach that has been -- the Canadian Tire Corporation has followed for the last 10 years. It's proven successful. And we think it's going to prove successful into the future as well. And that is this notion of balanced capital allocation. Now at the center, the core of that is a strong balance sheet. And what we're looking for is, again, to maintain kind of that investment-grade credit rating. We've been very declarative, I think, around our focus items is on investing in the business. But we recognize, to have a balanced capital allocation program, you need to have a robust return-of-capital program as well. And if I look back what we've done over the past few years, take a look at dividends, for example. We had our 12th consecutive increase on dividends. The Board approved a 10.6% increase in November. And as I've said in my script, shareholders should expect us to, again, maintain that target ratio -- that longer-term ratio between 30% to 40% as a payout ratio for dividends of annual earnings. Now to get to your specific on share buybacks. We -- as you know, we announced a $400 million program in November as well. We're, roughly speaking, around halfway through that program. And the way I think we think about share buybacks is we recognize it's an important part of return of capital. And we don't typically make multiyear commitments as it relates to share buybacks. But I'll tell you, we'll consider share buybacks every year as we're thinking about our plans, et cetera, and then work that through with our Board. So right now, we're well on our way on the $400 million commitment that we've spoken about. And as we finalize that and get our way through the year, we will make a decision on the dividend this year and as well as share buyback program as well. I think that was the main part of the program. I think I lost some of, frankly, the EPS commentary. So we might have to follow up on it.

I think you got most of it.

Is your EPS on the conservative side?

Well, I don't think our EPS is on the conservative side. I think it's actually appropriate. It's interesting. I mean, we had questions on both sides from different folks thinking there's some risk to it, and it's -- now is it conservative? We don't think so. I really believe this is an appropriate target. All the comments Greg talked about upfront, I think, are important to realize. But as I think about our long-term aspirations, I think, again, I'll use the terminology. I think we're punching all the keys on the keyboard. And I feel it's a very achievable, appropriate target, and we'll throw off lots of cash from operations that we think can fulfill that agenda that we spoke about earlier.

Okay. Thanks, Gregory. Our next web platform question comes from Patricia Baker, Scotiabank. On the owned brands strategy, you've announced plans to add over 12,000 new products over the 4-year period. Can you provide an indication of how much of this will be at CTR? And is the timing of these launches skewed to the end years or more evenly distributed?

Sure. So Patricia, I thought for sure, we could count on you being on the audio platform. All of you guys are hiding behind the web platform, but that's okay. That's okay. We can deal with it. Yes. Why don't I start. Because the message was specific to CTR, we'll hand it over to TJ, so he can get his thoughts ready. Overall, I'll just talk about the enterprise level. I think we provided a good amount of transparency around how important this initiative is and its huge strategic advantage for us. We think very underappreciated and undervalued as a real world-class core competency. We look to target as a best-in-class private label our owned brand retail house. And their penetration as a percentage of total sales is in that 30% range. We're starting this outlook from a 39-ish range and moving to 43% plus. We keep wanting to put that plus in there. I think in aggregate, the aggregate portfolio has fairly even distribution. And what I love about this capability is the fact that the 12,000 new products that's actually -- accounts for 20,000 new SKUs, our team knows exactly when those are going to be deployed. We didn't make up those numbers. There's a tremendous amount of data and product development road mapping that links to every single one of those launches. So this is a highly, highly sophisticated capability at the enterprise level. CTR has been leading the charge without a doubt on this over the course of the last few years. Mark's has always been a very strong private-label house, as you know, and now we're pushing over into Sport Chek. But as it relates to the cadence here in CTR, why don't I ask TJ to comment? Thanks for the question, Patricia.

Yes. Thanks, Greg, and thanks, Patricia. I don't have much more to add other than we're not starting from a standing position here. We've been working on owned brands development for years now. And the lead times associated with product development, our teams know what they're building for 2023 and 2024 right now. We're manufacturing all of the work that they worked on 2 years ago in terms of product development. So we have a very robust planning process, very intertwined with the merchants because we really try to run that balance of a strong owned brand portfolio connected with a strong national brand portfolio. So we feel very good about our ability to deliver these numbers. And much like our real estate team, the product developers are very busy. So we feel good about the prospects, and we are doubling down on owned brands, as you heard us talk about in the presentation.

Thanks, TJ. We have another shy analyst. Mark Petrie from CIBC has submitted our last question for today. You mentioned the Liberty Village store that operates its own home delivery. What impact has that had on that store in terms of sales and profitability? And do you think this is a scalable opportunity?

Yes, again. I think this is a question for TJ. I mean home delivery is an important fulfillment mode for all of our banners and has been growing significantly. So it's an important part of how we go to market from a customer experience standpoint. We're getting better. We continue to test new things at the enterprise level that we can port to various banners. Koryl talked about DoorDash as an example. But specifically to Liberty Village, why don't I ask TJ to comment on that?

Yes. Thanks for the question. I mean, the truth of the matter is Liberty Village has been performing very well. And I would go back to what we've been talking about all day. We're an omni-channel retailer, right? And home delivery is but one component of a broader customer service orientation that we want to provide. What we find at the local level is when we find e-commerce or ship-to-home over-indexing, dealers act and they take matters into their own hands and they create capabilities in and of themselves. And we're going to see that as we go forward here. And I think just to reiterate what Greg said, we're always looking for opportunities to provide value to customers. And we do that historically and as we go forward here through our flyer program and our high-low strategy as well as through our Triangle Rewards. And shipping to home is just one way that you can add value. And at this point, we don't have any immediate plans to look at things like free shipping, but we are constantly evaluating that strategy, our strategy. And we're testing a few things here and there, and we'll decide at the right point where the economics make sense for us. But we feel very confident about our ability to deliver value to Canadians.

Thanks, TJ. Greg, that was our last question. So I hand over to you to wrap it up.

Great. Thanks, Karen. So at this point, I don't think there should be any question that we have a strong, committed leadership team who is confident in the future of CTC. The strategic investments we're making will create better customer experiences, I think, deeper customer connections and drive long-term growth and value for our shareholders. We're very well positioned and have a clear path for growth through our better connected strategy, a strategy that's built on a century of success, combined with powerful assets and capabilities that enable us to not only compete but to win in the world of retail. So thank you very much for joining us this morning. We look forward to continuing this conversation with you in the near future. And with that, I'll officially conclude today's presentation. Thanks for your time.