Alto Ingredients, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Aalto Ingredients first quarter 2026 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, and then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Jody Berfening, Alliance Advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Nick, and thank you all for joining us today for Alto Ingredients' first quarter 2026 results conference call. With me today are President and CEO Brian McGregor and CFO Rob Olander. Alto Ingredients issued a press release after the market closed today providing details of the company's financial results for the first quarter of 2026. The company also prepared a presentation for today's call that is available on its website at altoingredients.com. A webcast and webcast replay will be available on the Alto Ingredients website. Please note that the information on this call speaks only as of today, May 6, 2026. You are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay. Please refer to the company's safe harbor statement in the slide deck posted to the company's website which states that some of the comments in the presentation constitute forward-looking statements and considerations that involve risks and uncertainties. The actual results of ALTO ingredients could differ materially from those statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, events, risks, and other factors previously and from time to time disclosed in ALTO ingredients filings with the SEC. Except as required by applicable law, The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In management's prepared remarks, non-GAAP measures will be referenced. Management uses these non-GAAP measures to monitor the financial performance of operations and believes these measures will assist investors in assessing the company's performance for the periods reported. The company defines adjusted EBITDA as unaudited consolidated net income or loss before interest expense, interest income, provision or benefit for income taxes, asset impairments, unrealized derivative gains and losses, acquisition-related expense, excess insurance proceeds, and depreciation and amortization expense. To support the company's review of non-GAAP information, a reconciling table has been included in today's release. On today's call, Brian will review the company's first quarter performance, Rob will review the financial results, and then Brian will wrap up and open the call for Q&A. It's now my pleasure to introduce Brian McGregor. Brian, please do go ahead.

Thanks, Jody. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I'll begin with a high-level review of our first quarter results and operational activities. After that, I'll turn the call over to Rob for a detailed review of our financial results for the quarter, and then wrap up and open the call to Q&A. The first quarter is typically a seasonally week period for both Alto and the industry resulting from the buildup of ethanol inventories and lower demand. In contrast, we are reporting strong first quarter results relative to our historical performance in this period. We delivered profitability on an adjusted EBITDA and net income basis through the contribution of stronger export sales, higher crush margins, and incremental earnings from 45Z tax credits. Even without the contribution of tax credits, we were profitable. Our strategic realignment, our efforts to improve our operational model, and our success in capturing premiums over fuel ethanol have enhanced our earning power. We remain focused on maximizing value from our diversified portfolio of assets and on pursuing multiple revenue opportunities in response to market demands. To that end, we have robust plans to improve utilization, reliability and efficiencies, and to support higher value revenue streams during 2026. Let me share with you some highlights of the operational activities we tackled during the first quarter and update you on the capital projects we have planned for 2026. First, as discussed on last quarter's call, an extended period of very cold weather in the first half of the quarter disrupted river logistics and caused us to curtail production at our Pekin campus. We took the opportunity to accelerate a portion of our planned wet mill biennial outage work that was scheduled for the second quarter. This will allow us to recapture loss production when crush margins are typically stronger and keep us on track with our goal to increase total 2026 alcohol volumes and prioritize product mix that delivers a premium to domestic renewable fuel. Secondly, We had a plant outage at our Columbia facility during a seasonally slow quarter for CO2 sales. Combined with the outage we took last December, we addressed deferred process related activities intended to improve production performance and plant reliability for the remainder of the year. This work will help ensure the plant is running at optimal rates to reliably support our CO2 offtake customers growing demand in the coming summer months. It will also allow us to qualify more gallons for 45Z credits. We're still planning a normal outage at ICP during the second quarter consistent with 2025. In terms of capital projects that are peaking campus, we started the repairs on the original dock and the construction of the second alcohol loadout and are on track to complete both projects by the end of 2026. As a reminder, we are building the second alcohol dock to create redundancy and improve logistical capabilities. We also kicked off a project to increase throughput and storage capacity in our Columbia liquid CO2 processing facility by adding a third storage tank. This project will position us to further capitalize on favorable market conditions, specifically the growing demand in the Pacific Northwest and limited supply for premium CO2. At our peak and dry mill, our most efficient plan, we are moving the planned outage to June from the third quarter. During this downtime, we are going to implement a deep bottlenecking project to increase annual production capacity by about 8% or 5 million gallons. We expect to fully realize these improved rates starting in the fourth quarter, which will provide an incremental margin and allow us to qualify for more 45Z credits. Finally, In addition to the CAPEX projects we planned for 2026, we are continuing to assess large-scale CO2 utilization and sequestration opportunities at our Pekin campus. These projects would position us to lower our carbon intensity score and monetize additional incremental earnings from 45Z credits and generate more liquid CO2 revenue. Before I turn the call over to Rob, we're closely monitoring macro conditions, including unrest in the Middle East. which can indirectly affect us through energy and commodity volatility and freight and export logistics, and we're actively managing these exposures. We're also encouraged by continued progress on E15. In California, AB30 has provided a pathway for year-round E15 sales, and we're watching the state implementation process closely. Nationally, momentum for year-round E15 legislation continues to build in Congress. We view expanded access to E15 as an important demand-side complement to the production incentives in 45Z, helping ensure the market can absorb additional low-carbon gallons over time. Without demand growth, incentives alone can contribute to unintended consequences, including overproduction and pressure on industry margins. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Rob for a more detailed review of our Q1 financial results. Rob?