MARK DAVIS
President & CEO

Thank you, Vic.

As the numbers you have just seen indicate, Chemtrade has had a successful beginning.

  • The IPO raised gross proceeds of approximately $130 million at a time when the market was not particularly strong.

  • The business has performed beyond the expectations outlined during the marketing of the IPO

  • The market performance of the units reflects the strong results and investors' confidence in Chemtrade's long-term performance.
The overall return for investors has been quite positive. If you took the unit closing price as of April 30, 2002 and added to it distributions attributable to that period, an initial investor would have realized a return of approximately 50% in the nine months since the IPO. This return does not include the recent increase in our unit price from $14 on April 30 to $14.60 as of May 24. This compares very favourably with the income trust universe.
This chart compares Chemtrade's unit and total returns to the income fund index and the TSE 300. As you can see, Chemtrade's returns on both a unit price and total return basis is significantly better than the TSE and income fund indexes.