American Resources Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the American Resources Corporation fourth quarter and year end 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mark Levergetta, Vice President, Corporate Finance and Communications. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of American Resources Corporation, I'd like to welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full year 2023 conference call and business update. We always welcome this opportunity to provide an update on our businesses and discuss our accomplishments we made over the past several months. and how we are uniquely positioned within the end markets that we serve for our American Carbon, American Metals, and Re-Element Technologies divisions. On the call today is Mark Jensen, our CEO, Kirk Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer, and Tom Salve, our President. We'll provide some prepared remarks today, and then we'll go into some questions and answers. Before we kick it off, I'd like to remind everyone of our normal cautionary statement. Certain statements discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risk uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. When considering forward-looking statements, you should keep in mind the risk factors, uncertainties, and other cautionary statements which are laid out in our press releases and SEC filings. We also do not undertake and the obligation to update, revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Lastly, for anyone wanting to ask a question today, I believe you will need to dial in by phone to get into the queue. We're going to begin today with a few comments from our Chief Financial Officer, Kirk Taylor.

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, everyone, for taking a few minutes out of your day to listen to our fourth quarter earnings call. Over the past several months, we've continued our execution on solidifying our strategic positioning within our adjustable markets, which we believe positions ourselves and our company for attractive long-term value creation. In doing so, and in conjunction with the directive of our strategic committee from our board of directors, we've embarked on several initiatives to unbundle our unique platform of assets to better unlock value for all of our shareholders and position each entity as a standalone company Much of our focus over the past several months has been to position and prepare both American Carbon as well as re-element technologies in standalone public companies. These efforts include securing growth capital, such as a $45 million tax industrial bond for our Wyoming County coal complex, and our recently announced, or as of today, announced securing $150 million net of fees industrial development bond to develop what we believe is the nation's first of this kind lithium and critical mining mineral refinery in Kentucky. Both of these examples show that we have successfully capitalized near-term and intermediate-term growth plans for both American Carbon as well as Realment Technologies. Today's closing of our second Texas at Bond is another tremendous milestone for our company as we continue to put the necessary pieces in place to execute on our mission This is another monumental moment for our Re-Element Technologies Division and for our country. Our Kentucky Lithium Project is such a great example of how we can efficiently execute on our nation's energy transition goals. The planned transformation of our Knott County facility enables us to utilize controlled land, resources, and already in-place infrastructure and a tremendously skilled workforce to quickly meet the needs of the rapidly growing energy storage market. along with utilizing our groundbreaking refining process to produce ultra-pure battery-grade products in an environmentally safe and low-cost process. This region of the country is well-positioned geographically within the developing battery belt and comes with a long-standing history of pride and know-how in the raw material commodity processing industry. We appreciate the leadership of Knott County, Kentucky in working with us and sharing in our vision. And again, working with Hilltop Securities and their exceptional execution throughout this process. We're also in the process of working to secure additional sources of project development and growth capital through the tax and bond market, government incentives and grants, as well as bringing in strong equity partners, both strategic and financial. That is across both American Carbon, American Metals and Realty Technologies. I'll briefly go over year end American Resources Consolidated Summary. Over the past year, we have showcased our operational flexibility while also prioritizing the most accretive uses of capital and securing additional non-diluted capital to position our unique set of assets and execute on our value-creating missions. Our full-year 2023 revenues of $16.7 million, which is a decline from 2022, are attributed to our decision to allocate capital to the most accretive uses of throughout all of our businesses, re-element, American Metals, and American Carbon. As such, our management and board chose to aggressively advance the development of re-element technologies, which include operating and expanding our Noblesville facility for customer qualification and validation, large-scale domestic project development, which includes the Marion Super Campus, as well as the Kentucky Lithium Project, international expansion, adding to our, what we feel, the world-class team, and procuring feedstock and offtake agreements. Now additionally, while we've also been focusing on streamlining our balance sheet and continuing to reduce our bonding costs, our long-term environmental liability at the corporate level and at the operating subsidiary level. As such, we chose to keep our metallurgical carbon extraction processing activities idle and in the development stage while working aggressively to mitigate ongoing environmental liabilities attached to the permits that we acquired through previous bankruptcies of prior legacy producers. Throughout the year, we did not take on any meaningful new operational debt, and the only new project debt we took on was associated with the issuance of the tax exempt bond for the development of our Wyoming County West Virginia mining complex. As of today, our current shares outstanding is just over 79.1 million Class A common shares. Cash on hand at the end of 2023, including funds held for development of Wyoming County Pool Complex of $37.3 million. And again, as a reminder, all of our excess cash is held in FDIC limits at the top tier U.S.-based banks. Our unique platform of assets is in a tremendous position to deliver attractive returns and value to our shareholders. I'd like to now turn the call back over to Mark LaBergetta for some additional comments.