Exchange Income Corporation (EIF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Exchange Income Corporation Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders. My name is Mike Pyle, and I'm the CEO and a Director of the corporation. Normally, you would hear Gary Filmon's voice at this point in the meeting, but Gary is under weather today, and I'm filling in for him. Therefore, I will act as Chairman of the meeting. I am speaking to you from the offices of Exchange Income Corporation in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Here with me are Carmele Peter, our President; and Dianne Spencer, our Corporate Secretary. I will lead us through the formal part of the agenda, and then we will have 5 members of our executive team, each give a presentation on the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on their operations. Adam Terwin, our Chief Corporate Development Officer, will also present on the impact of the pandemic on the efforts of our acquisition team. At the conclusion of the presentation, we'll have an opportunity for questions from registered or beneficial shareholders. Although we are disappointed we cannot see each of you today, our thoughts are with you, your families and the communities you serve. We want to thank you for your patience as we continue to navigate through this unprecedented situation. Instructions on how to ask questions and the voting procedure will appear on your screens. As with any new technology, unexpected glitches may occur. But our service providers for this platform at Lumi are very experienced at running this type of meeting and will help us out if an issue arises. The meeting will now come to order, and I'll ask Dianne Spencer to act as secretary of the meeting and Nazim Nathoo from AST Trust Corporation candidate to act as scrutineer. The secretary has confirmed that the notice calling this meeting of shareholders was filed on SEDAR on March 15, 2021. And the record date for the determination of shareholders entitled to receive notice of and to attend the meeting and vote was April 9, 2021. The scrutineer has confirmed that there are present, by proxy, a sufficient number of persons holding a sufficient number of votes -- of shares, entitled to vote at the meeting to constitute a quorum. Voting delegates and any other person attending a meeting of members may address the meeting when there is a call to discuss a motion. Before the meeting, should you like to address the Chair on any motion, please type in your question or comment in the message section. If there are any discussion or questions, the moderator will lead the question along. Notice having been mailed as required and a quorum being present, I declare that this meeting is duly constituted for the transaction of business, and the polls are now open for all resolutions. This is an Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders was called to consider 5 matters with voting required for 4 of them. We will conduct the votes on the matters before us by a poll. On a poll, every shareholder entitled to vote on the matter has one vote in respect of each share entitled to be voted on the matter, and that held by that shareholder. The poll will be opened for all resolutions at the same time. This will allow you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until the conclusion of discussion on each resolution prior to casting your vote. If you've already voted in advance of the meeting and do not wish to change your vote, you do not need to vote again during the meeting. Finally, we'd like to remind you that our answers to your questions and our presentation may continue -- may contain, I'm sorry, forward-looking information. By its nature, this information contains forecast, assumptions and expectations about future outcomes, which are subject to the risks and uncertainties discussed more fully in our public disclosure filings. We will now go through each of the items on the agenda in turn. The first item of business is to receive and consider Exchange Income Corporation's consolidated financial statements for the period ended December 31, 2020, together with the auditor's report on these statements. The financial statements and auditor's report on them were included with the financial -- with the material sent out giving notice of this meeting and available on SEDAR and the company's website. Unless there are any questions, management or its auditors, we will take the financial statements and the auditor's report as received and considered. The second item of business is to appoint the auditors of Exchange Income Corporation for the ensuing year and to authorize the Directors to fix the remuneration of the auditors. Would a voting delegate please make the motion?

Mr. Chairman, I move to resolve that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed auditors of Exchange Income Corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are duly appointed, and the Directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration.

Thank you, Mr. [ Warrick ]. Would a voting delegate please second the motion?

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Terwin. Is there any discussion of the motion?

Mr. Chairman, there is no discussion at this time.

As there is no discussion, I will call -- now call for a vote on the motion before the meeting. Would all voting delegates please enter their votes in Lumi? [Voting]

The third item of business is the election of the directors of Exchange Income Corporation for the ensuing year. As we did not receive any other nominations in compliance with our advanced notice bylaw, I declare the nominations closed. And I will now entertain a motion to consider an ordinary resolution to elect 10 directors to hold office until the next general meeting of the shareholders or their earlier removal or resignation. Brad Bennett, Polly Craik, Duncan Jessiman, Grace Schalkwyk, Don Streuber, Gary Buckley, Gary Filmon, Michael Pyle, Melissa Sonberg and Ed Warkentin have been nominated for election as Directors of EIC. Would a voting delegate please make the motion?

Mr. Chairman, I move to resolve that Brad Bennett, Polly Craik, Duncan Jessiman, Grace Schalkwyk, Donald Streuber, Gary Buckley, Gary Filmon, Michael Pyle, Melissa Sonberg and Edward Warkentin be elected as Directors.

Thank you, Mr. Warrick. Would a voting delegate please second the motion?

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Terwin. Is there any discussion on this motion?

Mr. Chairman, there is no discussion at this time.

As there is no discussion, I will call for a vote on the motion before the meeting. Would all voting delegates please enter your votes in Lumi? [Voting]

The fourth item of business is to approve the unallocated awards under the fourth amended and restated deferred share plan of the corporation. A summary of the key features of the fourth amended and restated deferred share plan of the Corporation was included in the Corporation's management information circular dated April 8, 2021. And a copy of the fourth amended and restated deferred share plan may be obtained by contacting the Corporation at the address set forth at the end of the management circular, or on SEDAR at sedar.com. Would a voting delegate make the motion please?

Mr. Chairman, be it resolved, as an ordinary resolution of the shareholders of Exchange Income Corporation that all unallocated awards of deferred shares under the fourth amended and restated deferred share plan of the Corporation, dated May 9, 2018, are hereby authorized and approved. The corporation shall have the ability to continue granting awards of deferred shares under the deferred share plan until May 14, 2024, being the date that is 3 years from the date hereof. Any one or more directors or officers of the Corporation are hereby authorized for, and on behalf of the Corporation, to take or cause to be taken, any and all such acts and things and to execute and deliver under the corporate seal of the corporation or otherwise all such deeds, instruments, notices, consents, acknowledgments, certificates, assurances and other documents, including any documents required under applicable laws or regulatory policies as such director or officer in his or her sole discretion may determine to be necessary or desirable to give effect to the foregoing resolution such determination to be conclusively evidenced by the taking of such action or such director or officers execution and delivery of any such.

Thank you, Mr. Warrick. Would a voting delegate please second the motion?

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Terwin. Is there any discussion of this motion?

Mr. Chairman, there is no discussion at this time.

As there is no discussion, I will now call for a vote on the motion before the meeting. Would all voting delegates please enter your votes in Lumi? [Voting]

The fifth item of business is to approve on an advisory basis the Corporation's approach to executive compensation. As described in the Corporation's management information circular dated April 8, 2021, the Corporation's compensation, policies and procedures are based on the principle of pay for performance. The Board believes they align the interest of the corporation's executive team with the long-term interest of the shareholders. Would a voting delegate please make the motion?

Mr. Chairman, be it resolved, on an ordinary basis, and not to diminish the role and responsibilities of the Board of Directors of Exchange Income Corporation, that the shareholders of the Corporation accept the approach to the executive compensation disclosed in the management information circular delivered in advance of the Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders of the Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Warrick. Would a voting delegate please second the motion?

Mr. Chairman, I second the motion.

Thank you, Mr. Terwin. Is there any discussion on this motion?

Mr. Chairman, there is no discussion at this time.

As there is no discussion, I will now call for a vote on the motion before the meeting. Would all voting delegates enter your votes in Lumi? [Voting]

We will now take a short pause to answer any questions that have been submitted and to permit any registered shareholder or proxy holder, who has not already done so, to record their vote on the motions before the meeting. Having received no questions, I will close the polls in 30 seconds. Polls are now closed. I've now received the preliminary Scrutineer's report. With respect to the election of directors, I'm advised by the Scrutineer that each of the proposed nominees has been duly elected. With respect to the resolutions to appoint the auditors and approve the unallocated awards under the fourth amended and restated deferred share plan of the Corporation and approve on an advisory basis, the Corporation's approach to executive compensation. I'm advised by the Scrutineer that all of these resolutions have been duly carried. The detailed results of this meeting will be announced in a press release and also included in a voting report to be filed on SEDAR as soon as practical after this meeting. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for our Annual General and Special Meeting today. There being no further business, I am pleased to have, with me here today, 6 members of our executive team to speak about their experience and managing through the COVID pandemic for the last 12 months. I will turn the call over to Nick Vodden, the President and CEO of Perimeter Aviation.

Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you today as we navigate through these challenging times. As the President of Perimeter Aviation, an airline with a long tradition of serving remote first nation communities, I'd like to take a few minutes and talk about the essential nature of our operations, our sincere commitment to our partner communities and our ongoing assurance to our customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's important to understand that in the majority of our northern operations, we are one of the only or the only key link to providing basic needs to our customers, such as things like essential food delivery services, mail or Canada Post deliveries, dialysis patient movements, transportation of passengers to and from medical appointments, as many of the required medical services are not available in these communities. Delivery of pharmaceutical products for everyday medicine needs, emergency services such as things like moving crews when power outages happen or infrastructure, requires servicing. At the onset of the pandemic, we made a conscious decision to maintain all of our communities even when it was not required for passenger scheduled movements. At both Perimeter and our parent company EIC, we felt it was our obligation to keep the flow of essential goods moving, and to support our partners through the uncertain times, even though this would sometimes not be the most prudent financial decision. We believed if we looked after our communities first, we could adapt our business as time progressed to address the challenges of this temporary situation. Throughout the pandemic, there have been numerous opportunities to work with the changing needs of our customers. Here are a few key examples where we were able to provide a vital adoptable assistance to our communities. We enhanced protocols for our prevention of COVID spread on all of our aircraft and in our passenger facilities. Keeping our people and customers safe was paramount. We spent a considerable amount of time working with each community and their respective nursing stations, helping them facilitate the travel authorization protocols to where the passengers would have prior approval from the communities before they could travel. We have altered schedules to make Canada Post mail demands to meet the customers' needs as we've seen volume surge. We have enhanced our home delivery program, so that when our aircraft land in the community, we will take essential food products to the doors of our customers. Throughout the pandemic, there have been some specific services that we have been able to assist our communities with. At the pandemic onset, we were able to partner with our EIC participants and subsidiaries in the new Canadian-wide nursing relocation movement contract with Indigo Services Canada to ensure each community could have their required medical support. We have been able to develop protocols and procedures to obtain approvals to safely transport COVID-19 positive and close-contact individuals to appropriate isolation centers. Many of these communities have overcrowding concerns and limited infrastructure in the communities to address pandemic requirements. Of course, during all of this, there is still the daily needs that we all have to adjust with the communities, from saying goodbye to a loved one at a funeral to adopting a community tradition and, of course, traveling for services not available in these renewal communities. Due to the predominant essential nature of our northern operations, our communities have a heavy reliance on our services, and we take that very seriously. Our strong community relationships allow us to react humbly and appropriately when business volumes need to quickly adjust. As we saw last summer, when case counts went down after the first wave, we very quickly seen passenger volumes head towards historical levels before fading again with the second wave in the fall. While our teams remain committed to servicing our communities throughout this pandemic and beyond, I look forward to the day when the pandemic is under control and we get to experience more normal operations again. Recently, there have been many positive signs in our market. As much of Canada is currently fighting off the third wave, the majority of the northern communities have been fully vaccinated, largely avoiding a third wave in those communities. And many of the areas have begun the reopening process. We are anticipating a backlog of required passenger movement to ramp up this summer and then head towards historical levels and what will be a new post pandemic norm. Thanks for the time today and for allowing me to share my thoughts on how we support our communities, and every day, why it's important, even more important, during this pandemic. I will now hand it off to Gary Bell, our CEO, to comment.

Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to walk you through some of the benefits and challenges of operating a Combi, or combination fleet of aircraft, during a pandemic. Each EIC airline operates within its own niche. Those niches determine the appropriate fleet makeup of each one of our carriers. For Calm Air, a large percentage of our business is with 8 communities within the Nunavut region. And the only way in or out of those communities is by air service, where the vital links to the medical appointments in the South, and to the food, medical supplies and post office mail going North. Our preferred method of servicing these communities is by Combi, or combination aircraft, meaning that both passengers and freight are on the same aircraft. I appreciate that the communities that we service are between 350 and 3,500 people. So using an ATR-42, 72 or even 737 often seems excessive unless you can fill every aircraft for every flight. The advantages of having a Combi model is it often allows you the economies of scale to operate a bigger aircraft. A larger aircraft brings advantages being that they can have a bathroom and flight attendant on board. These may seem like items that we take for granted in the South, but appreciate the large number of medical patients that we're hauling, as well as elders and people requiring assistance, sometimes oxygen, even that water, coffee on board. The other major advantage is that -- of a larger aircraft is that while operators of smaller aircraft have to meet the same regulations and standards, the customer base that we service often sees a larger aircraft as a safety enhancement or has a perception of a larger aircraft being safer. The disadvantages of the Combi model is that it requires a predictable mix of both the passengers and freight. And during the pandemic, this has often not been the case. Every time a provincial or territorial government has either implemented or removed a travel restriction, our volumes of freight or passengers have fluctuated rapidly. The sporadic increase in cargo volumes, along with the decrease in passenger volumes has often created challenges. While we are able to adjust our aircraft from different configurations from 44 to 34, 22 and 10 seats, anything less than 10 seats is operating at an inefficient state. I appreciate that, that room for your bathroom, flight attendant, your galley, your overhead bins, even windows, is taking away from the space and weight that you could carry as a pure freighter. So managing those configurations is about most importance. I appreciate also that while cargo is important, and we are certainly happy that we have that volume, the margin on cargo is substantially lower than it is on passengers. We've been able to manage through this by being able to switch configurations, like I said earlier. We've been able to also switch between 42 and 72 capacity. And we've also used supplemental freighter capacity as well as capacity from our other carriers as we share our fleets and capacity between ourselves. The Combi model is a good one that serves us well. The point that we are trying to make is that it requires constant attention, monitoring and adaptation to what the market is doing to be successful. I'll now turn things over to Jake Trainor, who's the CEO of our PAL Group of Companies.

Thank you, Gary. And it's a pleasure to join you today to share some thoughts on PAL's Aerospace division, and how we feel we're strongly positioned to grow the business moving forward. Much like EIC, the PAL Group of Companies has made diversity and resilience a defining characteristic of our organization. We've emphasized this strategy building a group of aviation-related services that complement one another's operations, and benefit from diverse revenue sources to insulate us from the ups and downs of any single market segment or geography. Our Aerospace division showcases complementary companies capable of coming together and delivering a full-service offering, while at the same time, being able to develop revenue, independently, through their own unique specialized services. Our full capabilities can combine to make PAL a single point of accountability and win business delivering comprehensive programs like our long-standing contractual work for Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans, our established presence in the United Arab Emirates or our new program for the Netherlands Coast Guard. However, we do have the flexibility to engage our specialized units independently to participate in a variety of programs in partnership with other aerospace providers. Great examples of this include our role with Airbus in Canada's fixed-wing search and rescue program, or CarteNav as an established provider of Mission System Software, serving a range of clients around the globe. Both are great examples of the kind of role that we can play in a larger effort by integrating our unique abilities into a team. The future for long-term contracts for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as other specialized aircraft services are strong. Globally, as governments look to enhance their ISR capabilities driven by factors, like competition for natural resources or sovereignty issues, while at the same time facing budgetary concerns that are driving the need for alternate service delivery models, we believe we're well positioned and qualified to provide rightsized service offerings internationally. These conditions lead to significant long-term opportunities in terms of new contracts and scope growth within existing contracts in each of our geographies. When we step back, and look at our whole operation, we believe that the broad opportunities in the aerospace sector, coupled with the support that we get from EIC, has positioned PAL for a bright post-COVID future. We're committed to leveraging our partnerships, building our intellectual property and deploying our operational experience for advantage to continue growing our business. These are exciting times, and we're very confident in our direction. Thank you very much, and I'll now turn the discussion over to Hank Gibson from Regional One.

Good morning. Thank you, Jake. As a global supplier and leading regional jet lessor, Regional One has experienced the full gamut of industry challenges, setbacks and many recoveries throughout the past 14 months. Unlike most typical business cycle downturns, we have experienced a number of false starts to a recovery. The unpredictability of the circumstances has been unprecedented. The specific market conditions and business activity has been, and continues to be, highly dependent on geographical location at any specific point in time. This has primarily been driven by geopolitical policy, defined business both geographically and in terms of revenue sources. This has allowed us to support our global customer base and pivot resources on a variable basis as we progress through the pandemic. As we progress through Q2, we are experiencing more consistent activity in many regions, primarily, the domestic market here in the U.S. as well as on the continent of Africa. There have been a number of high-profile airline start-ups and fleet renewals that Regional One has actively supported. In fact, there has been a considerably higher number of airline startups than failures during this unique downturn. As airlines prepare for a recovery, Regional One has experienced an increase in our parts revenue, well off the COVID lows experienced in Q2 2020, and well on the way to pre-COVID levels. Our aircraft leasing trading business is also showing positive signals towards a more typical pre-COVID activity level. Regional One remains cautiously optimistic that the industry recovery will accelerate as the world makes progress in the rate of vaccinations. Thank you for your time today. I will now hand it off to Michael Lacovelli, CEO of Ben Machine Products.

Thank you, Hank. It's Michael Lacovelli, CEO at Ben Machine, a defense manufacturer in the Toronto area, and I'll be talking a little bit about the real ups and downs of navigating COVID at an EIC manufacturing facility, primarily in an Ontario hot zone. So at the outset of the pandemic, as with a lot of different manufacturers and workers in those types of environments, we placed a lot of importance on increasing our safety and did a number of different things like shutting down our lunch room, water fountains, vending machines, installing -- overnight, we installed 9 different washing centers, so that we could space our staff apart when they were doing washing at the end of the day. We staggered our day shift and night ships. We sent home individuals who could work from home. Unfortunately, in a manufacturing environment, that's not very many people, 3 or 4 people at our facility. But anybody who could work from home did work from home. And we worked together with our sister companies in identifying best practices. So one of the things that came out of conversations with our sister airlines was the fact that they were using a disinfectant product in their aircraft that lasted for 30 days, and disinfected -- not only disinfected the aircraft but made those surfaces good for 30 days in terms of continuing to disinfect viruses on touch. So we applied that to our facility. And on a monthly basis, disinfected the entire facility from that perspective. So at the outset of the pandemic, back in March, navigating these requirements was complicated and ever changing, as I'm sure everybody on the call knows. But our staff was focused and we were very good at keeping that under control. Shortly after that, we got a request, a very timely request, from some doctors at the local hospital, local community hospital were very concerned about the supply of PPE. It was big at the time. There was a limited amount of PPE. And the request was very simple. They were looking for a reusable face shield that would last longer than the current disposable face shields that were available and their concern associated with the supply of those disposable face shields. They needed something that would last them for a few weeks to a few months to give them some opportunity for the PPE to be built up. We immediately got in contact with our largest customer, L3Harris West Chem and their engineering staff, and this was on a Friday night, Saturday morning. And over the weekend, we collaboratively put together a design, a number of prototypes for a face shield that would be completely reusable for medical purposes. The following day on the Monday morning, we started production, and by Tuesday, we had delivered 1,000 face shields to this community hospital to keep them out of trouble while they were awaiting some further PPE. As a result of that and as a result of changing the design and making the product even better, we ultimately ended up gaining a contract from the province of Manitoba to help their frontline workers with the supply of 150,000 reasonable face shields. And as you might imagine that, from a morale perspective, for our staff was excellent. It really pushed the stuff as they knew they were helping not only themselves, but they were helping all of the other individuals on the frontline that, at the beginning of pandemic, were very much at risk. So the first year of the pandemic was nerve racking, but relatively uneventful. We did have some COVID cases, and they were all identified. But there's substantial organic growth, not only from the face shield contract, but from our existing customers in the defense industry, that ultimately resulted in us adding some extra equipment. So we ended up buying a number of different machines to add into our facility and grew our headcount of employees. So the first year of COVID went very, very well. Of course, life changed as it did for everybody around the country, as we moved into 2021. Our business here at Ben Machine found itself smacked out in the middle of one of the hottest COVID hot zones in the country. Not only that, but most of our employees, including myself, lived in adjoining hot zone communities as well. So it was a very stressful daunting time, trying to navigate through the outbreak in the community and with this increase in community transmission with the COVID hotspots. Recommendations and requirements for COVID substantially changed as well at that time, mandatory masks throughout the facility, active screening at the facility entry ways, a number of different things, further separation and plastic screens. And we tried our best to navigate all of that. And through all of that, we also experienced further growth when we ordered -- ended up ordering another 5 machines, 3 of which just were delivered this past week to help satisfy the growth that we were seeing. Unfortunately, despite all of these efforts and the great work of the team here and the staff here at that machine, we were ultimately hit by the U.K. variant of the virus. The communicable transmission in the facility was extremely fast within a few days, we had 5 or 6 employees who had started to develop symptoms. We immediately shut down that department plus the adjacent departments, basically sending about 25% of our staff home to try and stop any transmission throughout the facility. And while all affected employees said that they had no close contacts through that, it was clear that the variant was not like the earlier versions of COVID and didn't really care about 2-meter distance rules, didn't really care about masking capabilities. Despite the different things that you could put in place, it was going to attack. So when all of the dust had settled, out of the 30 people that we had sent home, about 12 of them ended up developing COVID. York Public Health, that we've been working with extensively throughout this time period, said that as a result of the activities, we had engaged like closing the lunch rooms and shutting down fountains. We probably saved, at that time, about another 40 to 50 employees at the facility from getting COVID. The impact was difficult for the facility. We did have some hospitalizations, but where our employees are gradually getting better and returning to work. And we've been able to remain open throughout that entire time frame. The other 80% of our staff continue to work. Product was being pushed out, and we were able to support our customers to the best of our abilities at that time. Since that event, things would look significantly brighter. We actually had a vaccine clinic with the support of York Region Public Health at the facility and managed to get most of our employees vaccinated and are hoping that we are seeing the very tail end of the concerns associated with COVID. So as you can see, COVID has had a bit of a roller coaster in terms of its affect at Ben Machine. It hasn't really slowed us down, and we've managed to increase our capacity here at the facility to support our customers. But it has been difficult. And we definitely see a very bright light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you very much, and I will now turn it over to Adam Terwin at EIC.

Thanks, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I'm glad to have the opportunity this morning to discuss the acquisition landscape with you. There's been a lot of up and downs over the last 15 months not unsimilar to our operating businesses. Although, as you just heard, the stress and the complexity levels that our operators have dealt with have been much, much higher. When the pandemic hit last year, deal flow in the general acquisition market basically came to a halt. If there were deals that were close to completion, some of those deals continued. But for the most part, deals were paused or they're outright canceled and new deal flow just came to a virtual stop. EIC was fortunate that we were able to work on the strategic acquisition of WIS and to close that during last summer. We went fairly far down the path on 2 other strategic opportunities. But after diligence, unfortunately, we didn't bring those to completion. During this period, new deal for activity was pretty slow. It started to pick up in the fall of last year, and that slower level really persisted to the end of the year. However, when we entered into 2021, we experienced a strong increase in our overall deal flow. Given the low over the last 9 months, there was pent-up supply on the seller side from vendors who had stopped the process is when the pandemic started or who would have came to market during that 9-month slow period. And there's also owners of the companies who, after experiencing the stress of pandemic decided that it was a good time to come to market to sell the company. The opportunities have been wide-ranging for us. We've seen opportunities across all our sectors, both in Canada and in the U.S.; strategic opportunities, opportunistic ones, small deals from a couple of million dollars to significant size deals that are hundreds of millions. From the buy side, there's been a lot of competition. There is lots of competition before, and even so more now after the pandemic. There's been a lot of capital available in the market, private equities had raised an all-time record amount of money before. Then there is the SPAC explosion, which led to just a lot of buyers in the market. The -- this combined with the availability of low cost debt, really put pressure on multiples, especially for larger transactions. We've been fortunate to advance on a number of deals over the last 6 months. Some of these opportunities have now passed as a result of us conducting diligence and removing ourselves from the process, or ultimately, be more successful based on price. Diligence has been very unique. Travel has been difficult, there's that obvious challenge and not been on site. But we've been fairly fortunate on both sides of the border being able to navigate through that. We have operators that are able to help us out and travel when they need to. The more dynamic factor has been really assessing the impact of the pandemic on the short-term, medium-term, long-term aspects of the business. Business has been both positively and negatively impacted by the pandemic and the resulting government systems. And determining what is normal, what is not, what should be reflected in the ongoing cash flows of the business has been more of an art. Where we're at today? There are several deals that we continue to work through diligence on, and we're hopefully close to closing. The high likelihood of closing these gives us confidence that we'll be able to deploy the capital from our recent equity raise. The opportunities that we're seeing right now are both in aviation and the manufacturing segment, and they're largely strategic. We continue to be successful in midsized deals and in smaller strategic opportunities where the owners see a benefit in EIC's paternalistic ownership style, including empowering the entrepreneur and investing capital for the long term. Thank you, and I'd now like to turn the meeting back over to Mike.

Thank you. Do we have any questions?

There are no questions.

I guess the presentation was fulsome enough that everyone is satisfied. Thank you very much for joining us here today. We appreciate the opportunity to interface with our shareholders and our significant partners. We look forward to speaking to you again in August when we release our second quarter results. Have a great day, and most importantly, people, stay safe. Thank you.