Roman Dubczak: Hi everyone, welcome to our wrap up webcast for this year’s 27th Annual CIBC Western Institutional Conference. The conference recently ended and we’ve had a phenomenal experience here. As I mentioned last time, we have over 120 companies presenting well over 300 institutional investors. We’re able to facilitate 1200 one-on-one meetings in the short span of time that we’re here, which is a remarkable feat. Kudos to our team. It’s just been fantastic and well-organized, and the sentiment of all the attendees where this was very worthwhile trip to make and time to spend with one another. Well, let’s talk about what the themes were. A lot of opportunity to discuss industry specific, company specific and then macro topics. I would say the highlight events of the last day-and-a-half were twofold. One was a luncheon where Avery Shenfeld, our Chief Economist, presented his views on the economy and what’s ahead. And there’s a lot ahead. It’s going to be a very exciting year. And secondly, an Indigenous panel hosted by Lisa Raitt on doing business with indigenous communities and the trends that are evolving and the risks and opportunities that result from that. But, let me once again introduce Sean Gilbert, Co-Head of Global Debt Capital Markets, and the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Vice-Chair of Global Investment Banking. So, Sean, give us a bit of a rundown as to what you saw the key themes to be.
Sean Gilbert: Yeah, sure. So I agree with you. There was a ton of energy in the last day and a half. I didn’t know the number of one-on-ones, but that that doesn’t surprise me. Like the record. I think there was a lot of great discussion, both formally and informally. I was trying to think about a theme to kind of boil down the day and I’m going to give a theme that’s maybe a bit unusual for a Bond person, but ‘optimism’, I would say both ‘outright optimism’ and ‘guarded optimism’. We had these ad hoc survey questions, You know, “Are we going into recession?” “Do you see your revenues going up or down?” “Where will the TSX or S&P end up?” And they asked the same questions this year and last year, and Roman, I think we made the comment that the answers were a lot more optimistic this year. I don’t know what that says. Maybe people got it wrong last year. Maybe they’re going to get it wrong this year. But I did feel like the day started off with that optimism. You know, in a lot of the sessions that I sat in on and there was a lot going on, so I could only pick and choose, but, you know, you heard a lot of strong commodity prices, strong outlook, strong market fundamentals. So I would say that there was a lot of optimism there. And then, in the hallways talking to the investors, some of their themes and their one-on-ones and some of it was discussed. I think there’s a lot of belief in the business plan. I think a lot of belief in the outcomes that they’re expecting for the companies, and hopefully returns. But again, I think that if you go back to the conversations we had last year, even in prior years, the investor conversations were very optimistic. You mentioned lunch. I mean, Avery did a really good job of kind of merging Shakespeare and The Simpsons. So anybody that hasn’t seen that presentation, I highly recommend it. Like you said, there was a lot in there, but I think if you cut to the chase, a recession or no recession, he’s predicting a soft landing. So Avery is a top economist, if not in the world, definitely in North America. And I think that was a very positive message. And then finally, you know, if we bring it to kind of one industry in particular, because there were a lot of pipeline companies are presented, it feels like there’s a bit of optimism there with the Canadian egress, some pretty big projects on the go with Canada LNG, with Trans Mountain, with the polyethylene plant in Alberta. And so there was a lot of talk about, after some time of maybe a little bit more constrained with the egress, outlook on prices and fundamentals there. So I think that was really good. I mean, not to downplay the geopolitical risks, the economic risks, maybe the election risks. A lot of countries are going to the polls. Taiwan just did, and there’s more ahead. But I think with that backdrop, I was very positively impacted by what I heard today.
Roman Dubczak: Lisa, that Indigenous panel yesterday, that session was the most engaged I’ve ever seen a room engaged here. Probably every single person in that very large audience had a question, wanted to participate and well, I’ll let you walk through it, but it was just fantastic.
The Hon. Lisa Raitt: Well, we started planning on putting together something to do with cooperating and working with Indigenous communities, especially because we are seeing a lot of companies wanting to have investment from Indigenous communities and we’re seeing a lot of Indigenous communities trying to figure out how do we access capital. So we thought, “this would be a great place to bring that dialog. “So it’s not just one group talking to us and another group talking to us, but maybe they can talk to each other in the room. And that’s what we had. So we had Mark Podlasly from the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, and he answered questions very forthright, very candidly. People felt that they could ask any question that they wanted to, and they did. But the theme was, there have been really good relationships built in this country between companies and between indigenous communities already. And you can name them off in mining and energy and power. They’re there. And construction, no question about it. But they’re different. They were benefit programs that they would sign off. They would agree to employ some people during construction. What we’re talking about now is a leveling up. It’s a new generational look at how do First Nations communities interact in these big projects. And it’s through equity and capital. And I think the biggest surprise for a lot of folks in the room was the realization that the reason why it’s so difficult for indigenous groups to actually raise the equity in order to be able to buy into these projects. It’s because they don’t own anything. Under the Indian Act, they don’t own anything, so they don’t have collateral to put up. So they have to come up with creative ways, sometimes it’s through a company, sometimes they get a loan guarantee like they do in Alberta or in Ontario. But I think a lot of people are curious to know what’s going on in the space. But for our clients, what I think… I hope they heard, is the ‘opportunity’. $51 billion in Indigenous equity investment over the next ten years in projects. That is a big number and that’s a lot of capital to deploy.
Roman Dubczak: Yeah, the ‘decoding’, if you will, of how to do business with Indigenous communities and the complexity of it all I think resonated very, very strongly with our clients. And we had a couple of corporations up on stage with Mark that have done business with Indigenous communities and you know, they’ve obviously invested a lot of time and effort in it and have come a long way, yet there’s so much more to do. But the knowledge of how to navigate the communities is very, very important, but a great opportunity.
Sean Gilbert: And from a takeout perspective, as well. We’ve started to see the beginnings of funding in the term debt markets with some of the Indigenous partnerships. And so, that’s a huge opportunity as well. I think the market is primed for that.
The Hon. Lisa Raitt: It makes a lot of sense. Collaboration was a big theme too. We heard it from a lot of the CEOs. I was surprised with how many CEOs, industry specific, would pop into one of their other CEOs.
Sean Gilbert: I agree with that. I saw that as well.
The Hon. Lisa Raitt: It was kind of interesting.
Sean Gilbert: And even some got called out like, we’re working with so-and-so or he’s working with us. It was kind of interesting.
The Hon. Lisa Raitt: A lot of collaboration.
Roman Dubczak: Very positive. Yeah. You would argue that’s a very positive environment.
Sean Gilbert: Competitors, but collaborative.
Roman Dubczak: A cooperative competition. Yeah, great wrap up. I think the only thing I would add that I observed and it’s kind of in retrospect, there was a recognition that this last year was far busier than people had anticipated it was going to be. In the midstream sector, lots of transaction, M&A transactions. Financing markets were generally okay. You know, interest rates are obviously higher, but they’re coming down now and we’re seeing you know, just a very, very busy tape in terms of the debt capital markets. Equities should, at some point, pick up. And so it seems to me as though in prior years where there might have been some tentative bias about, ‘not so sure about the environment’. The environment seems a bit more locked down now as to what’s going to happen, with obvious risks in terms of geopolitics and whatnot. But the vast majority of the companies that were represented here were kind of on the highway at cruising speed and doing their thing. Whether it’s organic growth that’s financeable or inorganic growth. But there was a degree of cautious optimism. And I would end, kind of, on the word ‘of confidence’, in where they’re going. So that was it was a great theme. And certainly the engagement of the investors was very, very positive.
The Hon. Lisa Raitt: Yup, I agree.
Roman Dubczak: Like, lots of open discussion. Everybody got quite a bit out of spending some time here, you know, deeply ensconced on these issues. So, just terrific. And thanks for co-hosting this webcasts with me.
The Hon. Lisa Raitt: My pleasure.
Roman Dubczak: It’s been a lot of fun… and we’re looking forward to more of these conferences. The 28th is a year away, and I know our team is already planning and looking at how to take this conference to the next level. I don’t think we could put more people in this hotel. I’m pretty sure we can’t. But nonetheless, 1200 one-on-ones has been terrific. So thank you both. Thank to everyone who attended this year’s conference and look forward to seeing everyone soon. So thank you.
As we wrap up our 27th Annual Western Institutional Investor Conference in Whistler, Roman Dubczak, The Hon. Lisa Raitt, and Sean Gilbert, share their insights on some of the overarching themes from the 3-day conference. We thank our clients for a successful conference, and for continuing to partner with CIBC. We look forward to the 28th edition next year!
