Bridger Aerospace Group Holdings, Inc.

Please stand by. We're about to begin. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's Bridge Your Aerospace fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Also, today's call is being recorded, and I will be standing by if anyone should need any assistance. Now, at this time, I would like to turn the call over to the Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Eric Jarrett. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Joining me on the call this afternoon is Chief Executive Officer, Founder, and Director, Tim Sheehy. Before we begin, please note that certain statements contained in this conference call that do not describe historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Since forward-looking statements are based on various assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed include but are not limited to those discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including expectations regarding financial results for 2024. Management cannot control or predict many factors that ultimately impact future results. Listeners should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which reflect management's views only as of today. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause our assessment to change. However, we undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement or to make any other forward-looking statement. Throughout this afternoon's earnings release and our call today, we refer to the non-GAAP financial measure of adjusted EBITDA. The definition, calculation, and reconciliation to the financial statements of adjusted EBITDA can be found in Exhibit A of our earnings release, which is available on our website. We believe adjusted EBITDA is useful in evaluating our reported results as a supplement to and not our substitute for our results reported under GAAP. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Tim.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining today. Bruiser accomplished a great deal in the fourth quarter and in 2023 as a whole. We achieved record revenue of nearly $67 million in record adjusted EBITDA of $18.7 million for the full year. Its record performance was despite one of the slowest fire seasons in 25 years in the United States. While each fire season has its own seasonal and regional fluctuations and complexions, the overall trend of larger wildfires and longer fire seasons continues. This drives continued long-term demand for aerial surveillance, suppression, services, and technology capabilities. In fact, 2023 saw record contract awards for Bridger, including a five-year, $60 million exclusive use fire surveillance and technology contract in support of the Department of Interior, and a 10-year air attack contract for up to $166 million from the U.S. Forest Service awarded in the third quarter. While we saw a slow start to the U.S. fire season last year, we offset the impact by expanding our aerial firefighting operations internationally into Canada for the first time in our history where wildfires kicked off early and record acreage was burned. In fact, there are still over 100 wildfires that continue to burn underneath the snow today across Canada. These overwintering fires, or zombie fires as they are called, burned slowly below the surface during the cold months and have become more common in recent years. Having gone through the regulatory process in Canada last year, we are hopeful that Bridger could assist in Canada in the future as part of normal operations. Our deployment in Canada last year translated into the most territory covered in the history of the company, and we continue to make strides to further expand our aerial firefighting services to new mission-critical areas and geographies. In late 2023, we entered into a joint venture partnership with Marathon Asset Management, L.P., and Avenue Sustainable Solutions Fund to complete the purchase of four Spanish scoopers recently awarded from the government of Spain. This transaction was spent several years in the making and positions us to meaningfully expand our fleet over the coming years. As part of our expansion into Europe, we have established a new Spanish subsidiary, Albacete Aero, to oversee the return to service work on the four Spanish scoopers, which has already begun. It is important to note that we are not including any impact of the Spanish scoopers in our current 2024 guidance. We also acquired a hangar in Spain in the fourth quarter to support our growth in Europe. I also want to touch on our September acquisition of Ignis Technologies, which has been fully integrated with our investments in fire surveillance, intelligence, and SaaS assets. Through development with federal, state, and local fire organizations, this pioneering mobile and web platform elevates firefighters' situational awareness, creates a common operating picture across firefighting units, and produces real-time, high-value data to better manage wildfire risk. Recent software and surveillance contracts showcase this unique and differentiated offering in the marketplace. Turning to 2024, it is important to remember we have historically used our first quarter to finish winter maintenance of our fleet and to complete flight training and carting so that we are ready to mobilize come spring. While fire season typically begins in late April or May, this year we saw our earliest seasonal deployment of scooper and surveillance aircraft and company history to Texas and Oklahoma, where wildfires are being driven by air conditions in the central U.S. While this revenue will not be sufficient to offset spending in Q1 and seasonally negative adjusted EBITDA, it is helpful to set the company up for another record year of growth. And I'll turn it back to Eric to talk about our financial performance.