The Andersons, Inc.

and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in listen only mode. Later we will facilitate a question and answer session. To ask a question you may press star then one on your telephone and to remove yourself from queue please press star then two. If at any point you need assistance please press star zero to reach an operator. As a reminder this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I will now hand the presentation to your host for today, Mr. Mike Holter, Vice President, Corporate Controller, and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thanks, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Anderson's First Quarter Earnings Call. We have provided a slide presentation that will enhance today's discussion. If you are viewing this presentation from our webcast, the slides and commentary will be in sync. This webcast is being recorded, and the recording and the supporting slides will be made available on the investor's page of our website at andersonsinc.com shortly. Please direct your attention to the disclosure statement on slide two, as well as the disclaimers in the press release related to forward-looking statements. Certain information discussed today constitutes forward-looking statements that reflect the company's current views with respect to future events, financial performance, and industry conditions. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially as a result of many factors which are described in the company's reports on file with the SEC. We encourage you to review these factors. This presentation and today's prepared remarks contain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures are included within the appendix of this presentation. On the call with me today are Pat Bowe, President and Chief Executive Officer, Brian Valentine, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Bill Kruger, Chief Operating Officer. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. I will now turn the call over to Pat.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call this morning to discuss our first quarter results and outlook for the remainder of 2024. First quarter results were solid for the company and overall very comparable to last year. The mix of our results is a bit different with trade down against last year's record first quarter and renewables and nutrient and industrial both generating favorable results against 2023. I want to thank our teams for their hard work in producing these results in transitioning markets with a continuing focus on operating safety. As expected, trade had a slower start to the year as farmers have been reluctant to engage in forward sales as these lower price levels. Coupled with this is softer global demand for U.S. crops as worldwide supply and demand has become more balanced. These factors impacted both our physical grain assets and our merchandising teams. Our premium food and pet food ingredients business saw significant year over year improvement. This is a smaller but growing portion of our trade business and improvement comes from both organic growth and two recent accretive acquisitions. Operating performance in the renewables business was very strong and driven primarily from our ethanol plants. We had record first quarter production and efficient operations benefiting from lower natural gas prices and solid ethanol yields. The ethanol crush hedges the team executed during the fourth quarter also helped our ethanol margins. We are successful in increasing volume in our renewable diesel feedstock merchandising business, but have been challenged by compressed margins on industry fundamentals. Our feed coproduct values were also weaker with the overall lower commodity price environment. In our nutrient and industrial business, we experienced an increased margin and volume in our agricultural fertilizer product lines in this seasonally slow quarter. Results were significantly improved from the first quarter of 2023. Brian will now cover some of the key financial data. After that, we'll be back to discuss our outlook for the remainder of 2024. Brian?