Air Transport Services Group, Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Air Transport Services Group's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on the listen-only mode. After this week's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference may be recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host today, So Joe Payne, Chief Legal Officer, so you may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. We issued our earnings release yesterday after the market closed. It's on our website, ATSGINC.com. Let me begin by advising you that during the course of this call, we will make projections and other forward-looking statements that involve risks, and uncertainties. Our actual results and other future events may differ materially from those we described here. These forward-looking statements are based on information, plans, and estimates as of the date of this call. Air Transport Services Group undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect changes in underlying assumptions, factors, new information, or other changes. These factors include, but are not limited to, unplanned changes in the market demand for our assets and services, our operating airline's ability to maintain on-time service and control costs, the cost and timing with respect to which we are able to purchase and modify aircraft to a cargo configuration, fluctuations in ATSG's traded share price and in interest rates, which may result in mark-to-market charges on certain financial instruments. The number, timing, and scheduled routes of our aircraft deployments to customers. Our ability to remain in compliance with key agreements with customers, lenders, and government agencies. The impact of current supply chain constraints, both within and outside the U.S., which may be more severe or persist longer than we currently expect. The impact of the current competitive labor market. changes in general economic and or industry-specific conditions, including inflation, and other factors as contained from time to time in our filings with the SEC, including the Form 10-Q we will file next week. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures from continuing operations, including adjusted earnings, adjusted earnings per share, adjusted pretax earnings, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow. Management believes these metrics are useful to investors in assessing ATSG's financial position and results. These non-GAAP measures are not meant to be a substitute for our GAAP financials. We advise you to refer to the Reconciliations to GAAP measures, which are included in our earnings release and on our website. And now I'll turn the call over to Rich Corrado, our President and CEO, for his opening comments.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. Our second quarter results highlight a sequential rebound in our passenger airline operations and continued top-line growth across our principal businesses. Additional military and commercial flying, as well as operating efficiencies, led our ACMI services segment to report a 10% year-over-year gain to $24 million in pre-tax earnings for the second quarter. That was a $26 million improvement from the first quarter. CAM, our aircraft leasing business, grew revenues 2% versus the prior year, but pre-tax earnings were down. It has leased more Boeing 767-300 freighters and accepted scheduled returns of several 767-200s over the prior 12 months. We expect a record pace of new freighter lease deployments in the second half, including six already delivered this quarter. Accordingly, we're maintaining our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance and have raised our adjusted EPS guidance range by 10 cents from the targets we set in May. At the same time, we're lowering our CAPEX guidance for this year by $65 million to reflect fewer aircraft purchases for 2024 conversion and fewer than planned overhauls for our engines for 767-200 freighters. These reductions will have a positive impact on this year's cash flows, Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Quint Turner to review our financial results for the second quarter. Quint?