MTY Food Group Inc. ($MTY)

[Interpreted] Note that the meeting will be conducted in both French and English. Ladies and gentlemen, good day, the 2026 Annual General Meeting of MTY Food Group will now come to order. Mr. Eric Lefebvre, Victor Mandel, Rene Seton, Chertier, Financial. My name is Claude Pierre, a nice Director of the Corporation and with the consent of the meeting, I will act as Chairman and Secretary of the meeting. Also present are Mr. Eric Lefebvre, CEO; and Mr. Rene Netrang, CFO. We have elected this year again to hold a hybrid [indiscernible]. For shareholders online, instructions on how to ask questions and the voting procedures are currently on your screens. Please Note that only registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holders will be able to vote or ask questions. If you have already voted by proxy, note that you do not need to take any action. As described in the notice of meeting, we have 4 items of business on the agenda, of which the following tree will require your votes. One, the election of directors; two, to appoint the auditor for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration, entry on an advisory basis, to vote on the Board's approach to executive compensation. To facilitate matters for the meeting -- for each item of business, I will first read the idea of business in French than in English. Thereafter, I will make a motion, and I will ask if a shareholder of the corporation seconds the motion, and we will proceed with the vote. I will mention the time alone for voting at each resolution. Please note the resolution will then appear on your screens, and you will have the allocated time to vote. If registered shareholders, beneficial shareholders who have appointed themselves as proxy holders or other proxy holders are present at a meeting in person, ballots will be distributed for voting purposes as needed. Note that as in past years, the vast majority of votes have been cast in advance of the meeting by proxy through the various available channels. Preliminary vote results will be announced later during the meeting after all matters have been voted and polls are closed. Please note that after the formal part of the meeting, Mr. Lefebvre will be available to answer questions, I would kindly ask shareholders to withhold questions until then. With your approval, I shall ask Mr. [ Charles Mile ] of Computershare Investor Services, register and transfer agent for the corporation present year in person to act as scrutineer. Mr. Charles Mile has provided a written confirmation of mailing to shareholders of Notice of Meeting, Information Circular, a formal proxy, VIF and return card for the financial statement mailing list. I direct that the proof of mailing be kept with the records of the meeting. I'm advised by the scrutineer that there is a current presence. I direct that the scrutineers' report be kept with the minutes of the meeting. I now declare the meeting duly regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business, I therefore propose to proceed with the business of the meeting. I refer you to Item 1 of the Notice of Meeting, respecting the receipt of the financial statement of the corporation and the report of the auditor thereon for the fiscal year ended November 30, 2025, a copy of which are now available for the records of the meeting. A copy of the financial statements is also available on SEDAR+ under the corporation's profile for public filing and on the corporation's website. I declare the financial statements for the fiscal year ended November 30, 2025, together with the auditor's report thereon be considered received by shareholders as submitted to the meeting. The next item of business relates to the election of directors. It is proposed that 7 directors be elected for the ensuing year, subject to such increases as may be permitted by the articles of the corporation, Page 9 and 10 of the information secret for the names of management's nominees to the Board of Directors. I now declare the meeting open for nominations. I nominate the following 7 director nominees for election to the Board of Directors. Murat Armutlu, Eric Lefebvre, Stanley Ma, Victor Mandel, Dickie Orr, Claude St-Pierre and Suzan Zalter. I advise that no further nominees have been nominated person to the provisions of the corporation's bylaw. Therefore, I now declare the nomination for directors closed. I move that each person nominated be elected Directors of the corporation, each to hold office until the close of the next Annual General Meeting of shareholders unless they cease to be directors of the corporation before then.

May I have a seconder for the motion?

Thank you. Mrs. Ma. I now declare the polls open. I would ask the voting shareholders to please enter your votes. You have 1 minute. [Voting]

[Interpreted]. Voting closed. I refer you to Item 2 of the Notice of Meeting calling for the appointment of auditor and to authorize the directors to fix the remuneration of the auditor. I, therefore, make a motion to appoint -- I'm sorry, PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditor of the corporation for the ensuing year and that the directors be authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor. May have you heard the motion. May I have a seconder?

[indiscernible].

Thank you. Mr. Ma. We will now proceed with the vote. I would ask the voting shoulders to please enter your vote. You have 15 seconds. [Voting]

I declare voting closed. I refer you to Item 4 of the notice of meeting regarding executive compensation.I, therefore, make a motion that on an advisory basis and not to diminish the role and responsibilities of directors to shareholders accept the Board's approach to executive compensation as disclosed in the information circular. To accept the price proposition. May I have a seconder?

[indiscernible].

Thank you, Mr. Ma. We will now proceed with the vote. I would ask the voting shareholders to please enter your vote. You have 15 seconds. [Voting]

[Interpreted]. I declare the voting closed. We will now pause here for 2 minutes to compile votes. The scrutineers scrutineer, I'm sorry, as provided from a preliminary report based on proxies received prior to the meeting. We will announce these results in moment, sorry. I know that the corporation will report the detailed final voting results, including those votes submitted online at the meeting once the tabulation is completed after the meeting. Here are the preliminary vote results on the election of directors. The majority of the votes have been cast in favor of the appointment of the 7 nominees, I therefore declare these individuals duly elected as directors of the corporation until the next annual meeting of the corporation unless this is to be directors of the corporation before then. Here are the preliminary results on the appointment of auditor. The majority of the votes have been cast in favor. I declare PricewaterhouseCooper, Julia reappointed as auditor of the corporation for the ensuing year and that the directors be authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor. Here are the preliminary results on the advisory vote on executive compensation. The majority of the votes have been cast in favor, I declare the resolution regarding the Board's approach to executive compensation approved. As there are no further business to be brought before the meeting, this concludes all matters before our Annual General Meeting, and I now declare the Annual General Meeting terminated. On behalf of the Board of Directors, sincere thanks for your attendance and support, we hope to see you next year until do well. Having concluded the formal part of the meeting. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Eric Lefebvre, CEO. Eric, over to you.

So I will take questions in French and English. -- but I'll answer in English only for practical reasons. I have a short statement concerning the process. So we confirm that the process referred to in our previous disclosure, is still active and ongoing. The company cannot provide a specific time line or assurance that any transaction will result. As you can appreciate, we also cannot and will not comment on market rumors or speculation. The company will provide an update or make an announcement as appropriate or as required by law. So if anyone has questions.

So the question is if we have a target, whether we have a target, a long-term target for the number of restaurants in MTY. To that, I would answer, it's hard to have a specific target when you're acquisitive as we have been. You want to acquire companies for the right reasons, not to satisfy a target. But obviously, we want to keep growing the company as we have in the past. And the fact that there hasn't been an acquisition in the last 4 years, it doesn't mean we're not trying to acquire companies. It just means that sometimes it's things are just not meant to happen, and we stay disciplined and keep the course on what we've done before. But our ambition is still to grow the company organically and via acquisitions. For 2025, we achieved breakeven in a number of openings of orders for the first time in a long, long time. We believe we can do better than that in 2026. We have our pipeline of openings lined up. And we hope that going forward, we'll be able to grow both organically and the acquisitions. But to give you a number for the long term would be very difficult for us other than we want to keep growing. So the question is regarding the health of each of our brands. Obviously, we have a lot of brands. So I got to go through the entire portfolio today, but we've made it clear that right now, our top brands are Cold Stone and Wet pretzels in terms of growth. We've been opening a lot of locations for these 2 brands. We have other brands that are doing extremely well. Taco time, for example, in Canada, we think we can double the number of locations between now and 2030. So we have a few brands that are doing well. The number of good soldiers also in the portfolio. And as you can expect in the portfolio of 80 brands, there are a few that are struggling a little bit more. I would name our burger brands, for example, are experiencing some struggles as of late. Everybody has a good burger on their menu. And it's hard to survive in a burger environment, especially in the premium burger category. We've been also pretty transparent about what's going on at Papa Murphy's that we're trying to turn around. So obviously, there's a lot of talk about the brands that are not doing well. We'd rather focus on the brands that are doing well because we think this is what's going to take us to where we want to go and the growth we want to achieve, even though we have to put a lot of attention on those that require a little bit of fixing. But in a nutshell, those are the top top brands we have and the ones that are struggling a little bit more. So we have a question from the audience. With protein being recommended for diets, are you making changes to menus and keep up the good work. So yes, the protein-rich menus are certainly interesting. And we try to adjust to the trends. There has been, over the years, over the past 20 years, there's been a lot of trends that the gluten-free trend was important, and we introduced a lot of vegetarian menu items on our menus. I think all of our brands now have at least a few vegetarian options. And now with the focus on protein, obviously, we need to change that as well, and we need to adjust to that. If people are demanding more protein, we'll need to we need to observe that, and we don't want to lose customers because our food is not to the standards that we expect. So every one of our brand is is looking at their menu trying to come up with the options that are relevant and that will satisfy customers, especially in the new diets that are GLP-1 focused that require more protein. So we need to adjust to that for sure. I don't think reducing the portion size is the right approach for us. We've tried that before and that hasn't been the right approach. So we don't want to do have portions instead we'll adjust our menu to have a good attributes that people are looking for Okay. Well, there are no more questions. That will conclude the meeting, and I remain open for discussions after. Thank you. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]