AgroFresh Solutions, Inc.

And welcome to AgroFresh Solutions first quarter 2022 conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note, today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Jeff Sonick, Investor Relations at ICR. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

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 the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Some 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 today. please refer to the tables included in the slides that will accompany this presentation, as well as the press release, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website at agrefresh.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. The first quarter marks the first half of the southern hemisphere growing season, And while most of the harvest has yet to commence, we are off to a solid start in the first quarter. This quarter also shows the benefit of our diversification strategy, leveraging our global footprint and the breadth of our product portfolio to deliver both revenue and EBITDA growth while managing through adverse weather conditions that impacted select Latin American markets such as Brazil and Chile. With the first quarter in hand, I'm pleased to reaffirm our goal to drive growth in both net sales and adjusted EBITDA through continued strong growth in diversification and commercial execution this year. With that, I'll transition into the business drivers for the quarter. As a reminder, to further assist your understanding of our business and monitor the progress of our strategy to grow through diversification, we are providing you with additional disclosures on both a geographical and product solutions basis. The details can be found in our supplemental earnings deck on the investor relations website. Diversification revenues accounted for 43.3% of consolidated revenues for the trailing 12 months ending March 31st, 2022, versus 39.7% in the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2021, representing an 11.2% increase. This marks our fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit diversification category growth. We define our diversification category as the components of our business excluding SmartFresh for Apple, which covers all other crops, solutions, and technologies. While we will continue to defend our SmartFresh Apple business, we expect continued growth to be fueled by our diversification strategy. Success in diversification also helps to build a natural hedge against certain known risks in agriculture, such as weather. Further, diversification across products, platforms, crops, and geographies minimizes the adverse impact that any one of these variables can have on our results. From a geographical perspective, our Europe, Middle East, and Africa region generated 24.4% growth in sales, or an increase of $2.5 million for the first quarter of 2022, versus the prior year period. Growth was driven by SmartFresh and Harvista in South Africa, which experienced an early harvest season and a larger crop size, resulting in an increased need for storage and freshness solutions. Additionally, momentum in our fungicides and disinfectants category was especially strong in the region, driven by market penetration and product expansion. Latin America which represents our largest region during our southern hemisphere season, comprised about half of our first quarter revenues and decreased 8.2% versus the first quarter of 2021. The decline was primarily driven by lower sales of SmartFresh in Brazil, where the industry was met with severe weather that resulted in a crop that is estimated to be approximately 30% lower than the 2021 crop, which was their largest of the past decade. However, as always in the first half of our seasons, there's an element of sales timing at play due to varied harvest windows relative to the prior year. We're seeing this dynamic in Chile this year, which was lighter in the first quarter versus the prior year, but is expected to rebound in the second quarter and second half of the southern hemisphere season. From a product solutions perspective, we achieved growth across each of our diversification categories in the first quarter when compared to the first quarter of 2021. In terms of dollar contribution, I'd highlight our other category, which benefited from sales of our control tech equipment in Spain and Chile and contributed about $0.9 million of growth, as well as our fungicides and disinfectant category that I mentioned a few moments ago, which grew nearly 19 percent in the first quarter and contributed $0.8 million of growth versus the first quarter of 2021. Combined, these categories drove $1.7 million of growth during the first quarter. Our other 1MCP category, which represents our continued focus to leverage our SmartFresh franchise beyond apples and into other crops and geographies, and includes key solutions such as Harvista and Ethelblock, grew 4.5% versus the first quarter of 2021. Rounding out our diversification was the coatings category, which grew by 14%. These gains versus the prior year period were partially offset by our SmartFresh for Apple category, which decreased 7.5%, primarily due to the extreme weather in Brazil that limited Apple production. In summary, we're off to a good start this year. As we look to the balance of the southern hemisphere season and the rest of 2022, we will continue to advance our diversification strategy while continuing to defend our strong industry-leading franchise in SmartFresh for apples. As the pandemic has eased, my leadership team and I have been traveling to meet with a number of our customers, both domestically and abroad. One conversation with a customer in the Pacific Northwest region continues to resonate with me. He shared a very simple yet impactful perspective on the important role we play within his business, noting that as a grower processor, they have a tremendous investment tied up in their harvest. The preservation of the value of their fruit in storage is paramount and is something every grower loses sleep over. His confidence in the performance of SmartFresh and our other solutions could not be overstated. And it's feedback like this that reinforces the importance of the work that we do to support the post-harvest industry and motivates our team to continue to find ways to support our customers every single day. I'm energized by their positive feedback on the quality of our products and our people, and I'm reminded of our duty as the industry leader in the post-harvest freshness solutions. Customers recognize our unwavering commitment to service and the support we provide to ensure that they are able to deliver a consistent supply of high-quality fresh produce to the market. I continue to be very encouraged by the progress we are making towards developing new capabilities and the experienced team that has been bolstered with a number of new additions to advance our growth through diversification strategy. I'll now pass the call to Graham to speak to some of our financial highlights. Graham?