AgroFresh Solutions, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the agro fresh solutions second quarter 2021 conference call all participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions, please know today's event is being recorded at this time i'd like to turn the conference call over to Jeff sonic investor relations at icr sir, please go ahead. Jeff sonic, Investor Relations at ICR, Thank you, and good afternoon.

Today's presentation will be led by Clint Lewis, Chief Executive Officer, and Graham Maio, Chief Financial Officer. The comments during today's call and the accompanying presentation contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those results discussed in the forward-looking statements. All of these risks and uncertainties are identified and discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. We'll also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the tables included in the slides that accompany this presentation, as well as the press release, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website AgriFresh.com for reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Clint Lewis.

Thank you, Jeff, and welcome to everyone on the call. AgriFresh is a trusted brand in the post-harvest industry, known for our commitment to providing quality products and solutions. Our reputation is supported by our experienced sales and technical teams, that deliver a high touch service model that customers have come to rely on. We are an organization that provides innovative end-to-end solutions. We have a diverse portfolio with an attractive margin profile and have geographic breadth. These elements and our close proximity to our customers are the cornerstone of our market leadership in the post-harvest industry, which we aim to reinforce and grow in the years ahead. We have a global footprint with operations in over 50 countries that support a diverse base of more than 3,500 customers. This is a very strong foundation that we will leverage and build on. Our primary focus is to drive consistent, profitable growth through diversification, and I'm convinced that this is the right strategy for our company. In support of this strategy, We recently bolstered our leadership team with several important hires, all with seasoned experience and careers that span the broader global agricultural industry. These new additions, along with our talented AgriFresh team, will ensure we build an operational culture focused on growth and delivering a disciplined cadence of execution aligned to our diversification strategies. I outlined these leadership changes in a separate press release that we posted this morning concurrent with our earnings results. These new leaders bring new capabilities and deeper expertise to key roles to our company. In total, we added four new leaders to our team, two in new roles and two filling existing roles. Beyond their technical skills, each of these individuals also bring an ability to coach, develop talent, and ensure we embed deeper institutional capabilities in the areas of commercial, R&D, and business development excellence to further advance our organic and inorganic growth initiatives. Together, these new colleagues, working with our broader team, will be instrumental in helping us realize our goal of driving consistent, profitable growth as the main lever in delivering greater long-term shareholder value. We have also reorganized our teams to create improved alignment and focus to further accelerate our growth through diversification strategy. Specifically, we've created a new post of Chief Commercial Officer to drive commercial excellence and deeper customer engagement. This was filled by Mike Hamby, who will bring together the regional sales teams, bus sales operations, regional marketing, global product management, and digital solution teams into a newly created global commercial group. We've also recruited a new chief technology officer to advance both internal R&D and regulatory activities with an increased focus on strengthening our efforts to source innovative external innovation through our current portfolio and development pipeline. Duncan Ost will fill this role effective August 16, 2021, following the retirement of our current head of R&D and regulatory. Our internal global commercial capabilities will be enhanced through a new marketing leader, Amy Tranzilla. Like the others, Amy comes from outside our organization and will be our global head of marketing, leading a newly reorganized group consisting of both our regional marketing and global product management teams. And finally, we've created a new strategy and business development role, to augment our diversification strategy through identifying and successfully executing against external opportunities. Bob Barkley will be responsible for defining and executing a global business development strategy to drive incremental revenue growth that enhances our offerings and market position. With that, I'll transition to a review of the second quarter and first half business drivers before passing the call to Graham for his financial review. As we did last quarter, we are providing you with additional disclosures on both a geographical and product solutions basis to further assist you in understanding our business and our strategy for growth through diversification and for monitoring our ongoing progress. Please remember that it's best to measure our performance in halves versus quarter to align with the seasonal nature of our business, the regions we operate in, and the customers we serve. The details can be found in our supplemental earnings deck on our investor relations website. Starting with our strategy on diversification, we are continuing to make sequential progress towards our goal both in terms of mix and growth. If you look at our business excluding SmartFresh for Apple revenue, which captures all other crops, solutions, and technologies, this represents nearly 41% of total revenues on a trailing 12-month basis as of June 30th, 2021. This marks a sequential increase in our diversification mix of approximately 100 basis points from the first quarter of 2021. Additionally, I point out that we generated diversification category growth of approximately 23% versus the prior year on a similar trailing 12-month basis, which is helping drive this improvement in mix. These diversification metrics are at the core of our strategy, and this is what we are focusing our organization around to drive consistent, profitable growth. Shifting to some of the revenue drivers for both the second quarter and first half of 2021. I'm very encouraged by the progress we're making, and I'm pleased to share that our southern hemisphere season finished strong. We generated a second quarter net sales increase of 9.7% versus the prior year period to 21.9 million, and an adjusted EBITDA increase of $0.8 million to $1 million. For the first half of 2021 Southern Hemisphere season, net sales increased 14.9% to $60.9 million, and an adjusted EBITDA increase of 32.2% to $15.1 million. From a geographical perspective, looking at the combined first half performance for the entire season, we were pleased to see growth across each of our operating regions. Our Europe, Middle East, and Africa region led our growth with a 23% increase in sales versus the prior year period and finished with a very strong second quarter that benefited from a larger South African crop versus this time last year. Our largest southern hemisphere region, Latin America, represented approximately 45% of sales in the first half and grew 14%. driven by return to normal crop size in Brazil and higher fungicide sales across the region. We were pleased with this performance given the limited contribution from this region in the second quarter of 2021 due to earlier harvest this year versus last. The Asia Pacific region grew 8% driven by our recovery in the Australian apple crop as well as growth of our Harvista product in the region due to COVID related labor shortages that our solution is uniquely able to address. From a product solutions perspective, again, looking at the business performance for the full first half of the year compared to the comparable period last year, our portfolio of other 1MCP solutions, which primarily consists of smart, fresh diversification for crops other than apple, plus Harvista and Ethelblock, was our largest contribution to growth for the first half versus the same period last year, increasing 41%, or $4.5 million. While Harvista drove sales earlier in the season, supported by Harvista's entry into New Zealand and a full season of Harvista in Brazil this year, the second quarter was driven by strength in smart, fresh diversification for crops beyond apples. Our fungicide and disinfectants business also increased 39% for the first half and was the second largest contributor to growth with a $2.1 million increase. Results were driven by increased production in Spain and Morocco. Additionally, we experienced notable improvements in fungicide penetration in Argentina with our ActiSeal product and first-time sales of ActiMist in Chile. Sales of coatings grew 27% for the season through increased penetration in Latin America, along with increased citrus production in Europe and the Middle East. The coatings business largely comes from our Technodex franchise today, but is expanding through the recent launch of VitaFresh Botanicals, which is our plant-based edible coating solution to preserve inner freshness, extend shelf life, reduce food loss and waste, and result in a superior eating experience. As we shared last quarter, we are very pleased to announce Campasol's adoption of VitaFresh Botanicals for use in their avocado shipments from Peru to Europe. By using the VitaFresh Botanicals coating, Campasol's ripened avocados will have additional days of extended shelf life after arriving at retail locations, which we expect to help reduce retail food waste and generate significant retailer return on investments. This is a great start for VitaFresh botanicals as we continue to promote adoption to other major fresh produce companies around the world. Finally, some commentary on our SmartFresh for apples business. We were pleased to see 3% growth for the first half season driven by a return to normal crop size in Brazil and Australia and a larger crop in South Africa. While we experienced some contraction in the second quarter, due to a difficult comparison relative to the prior year, the business proved to be resilient and performed better than expected with only a modest 2% decline. In summary, we've had a good first half of the year, and we have good momentum going into the second half Northern Hemisphere season to generate year-over-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth. We have brought new and experienced talent to our company, which will help complement our broader teams as we continue to advance our growth through diversification strategy. I'll now pass the call to Graham to speak to some of the financial highlights. Graham?