AppHarvest, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the App Harvest 3rd Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to the call host, Kaveh Bakhtiari. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us on the App Harvest third quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm Kaveh Bakhtiari, VP Finance and Investor Relations for App Harvest. Joining me in Kentucky today are several members of the senior management team, including Jonathan Webb, founder and CEO, David Lee, board member and president, and Lauren Eggleton, chief financial officer. A copy of our earnings release is available on our investor website at investors.appharvest.com. On today's call, we will begin with prepared remarks from Jonathan and the rest of the team. Then we'll open the call to questions. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that comments today regarding the company's future business plans, prospects, and financial performance are forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the securities laws. These statements are made based on management's current knowledge and assumptions about future events, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them. For additional information on important factors that could affect these expectations, please see our most recent SEC filings. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jonathan.

Thanks, Kaveh. I'm impressed and proud of the progress our teams made in the third quarter. First, we delivered on our top priority of efficiently wrapping up the first growing season and completing the summer refresh and replanting on schedule in September. We accomplished this while achieving net sales results that were a little better than we expected coming into the quarter. In doing so, we remained on track with the 2021 annual outlook that we shared in August. Next, along with key leadership changes, we designed and implemented an effective new training program. The training resulted in a quadrupling of the number of crop care specialists earning a productivity bonus. As a result, Through the first part of the fourth quarter, the mix of number one tomatoes we produce was increased and is currently above our internal projections. Improved quality in our production provides the dual benefit of increasing the price per pound we receive for our tomatoes and lowering our distribution costs. And finally, we continue to make progress on our farm network in Kentucky. Along with consistently improving our operating results, Development of our network of farms remains a top priority and key focus. We expect additional high-tech indoor farms to be operating at scale by the end of next year. These farms will diversify our crops with leafy greens and berries, which we expect to lift our realized price per pound while reducing volatility. We expect this to remain a bright spot for our development team in the current environment. Our teams across the company are energized by our missions, which remains important as ever, given climate change and continued strong interest in sustainable solutions like our controlled environment agriculture approach. We're entering into a second growing season with lessons learned and more experience under our belt. We're excited by the opportunity to raise the bar as we harvest this new season's crop. Our operation is performing at a higher level. The development team and construction teams continue to work on expanding our farm network. The finance team has done a great job of positioning us to raise the additional capital necessary to fund our expansion of farms. As one of only a handful of traded public benefit corporations that are also B Corp certified, we're moving to a sustainable future with ESG principles as our foundation. To sum up, We're making progress towards our long-term goal of building AppHarvest into one of the most trusted sustainable food companies in the world and into a leading applied technology company serving the global CEA industry. With increased scale and diversity of crops by the end of next year, we expect the progress we're making to deliver long-term value to our shareholders, employees, and communities. Our president, David Lee, now will provide more detail on the quarter. David? David?