Heritage Global Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the Heritage Global Incorporated first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Nesbitt, of IMS Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call contains forward-looking statements based on our current expectations and projections about future events and are subject to change based on various important factors. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. For more details on factors that could affect these expectations, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Harris Global's Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ross Dove. Ross?

Thanks, John, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. 2021 is off to a solid start versus last year, as demonstrated by our achievement of significantly increased operating incomes. of one million and substantially improved adjusted EBITDA of 1.5 million. Our ability to drive growth and improve profitability can be attributed to strong execution by our team and reflects the strength of our diversified business model. As the economy reopened and recovered in the first quarter, we saw and are still seeing momentum in our industrial arts division as clients in this segment seek to liquidate surplus industrial equipment and assets in order to improve their financial position as they fully prepare to reengage their operations. Many companies are reinventing themselves to adopt to a more financially viable and asset-light business model, and they are turning to Heritage to help them efficiently and sustainably dispose of unwanted surplus equipment. With our visibility of the marketplace today, we expect to continue to see steady demand for our industrial recombination capabilities. As we move through the balance of 2021 and beyond, we anticipate that corporate sustainability practices will play an increasing role in driving growth in our industrial assets business. There is a tremendous emphasis in the industrial asset sector on giving second life to surplus machinery, industrial vehicles, and other assets. In addition to the monetization of these assets, companies are also recognizing the value of supporting the circular economy by engaging in pursuing secondhand life for their equipment rather than relegating it to the landfills. Heritage, through our auction and retail expertise, is poised to support our clients as they seek new owners to repurpose and reuse their older equipment. We are seeing a growing number of opportunities to help our clients offload used and unused equipment by recycling for others to use, resilient and environmentally sound, as well as fiscally beneficial process. We believe that our ability to support corporate and industrial sustainability practices represents a tremendous opportunity for us as we are moving forward. Looking to our financial assets division, while the business did show improvement in the first quarter of 2021, we experienced a lag in volumes due to the pandemic-related continuation of waivers and loan forgiveness, as well as the distribution of additional stimulus checks. Additionally, with the current limited availability of non-performing assets in today's market, larger players are paying higher prices to acquire what is available. That being said, we still remain competent over the course of the current calendar year. We will see an increase in the release of non-performing assets into the marketplace. In the meantime, NLEX has been continually gaining market share and added a number of new clients, positioning it well to benefit from the future increases in activity. As we have said previously, during the past year, COVID-19 restrictions created a stay-at-home economy that drove increased online shopping activity. And when increased online shopping, the economy saw a rapid growth in the buy now, pay later, or BNPL sales, which will result in an increase in charge-offs of these assets in the U.S. However, during the first quarter, we were still in the buy now portion of this process, and are now beginning to work through the expected pay later reality. As pay later becomes challenging for consumers, we expect to see growing volumes in the release of non-performing assets and NLEX is competitively positioned to provide an effective and efficient non-performing asset sale process for the new BNPL issuers. Additionally, we remain focused on offering specially financing solutions to small and medium-sized investors of charged-off and non-performing asset portfolios through Heritage Global Capital. As the year progresses, we expect to see more non-performing assets released into the market, favorably impacting demand for both parts of our financial asset services. With the opportunities and trends we are seeing in the marketplace, we are energized about the prospects for our industrial and our financial asset businesses as we move through 2021. Our industrial assets business is a proven partner in the liquidation of surplus and distressed assets for clients such as Pfizer, Amgen, and more recently, Halliburton. And we expect the reopening of the economy to result in growing demand from clients seeking our experience and our track record of success with brokered asset sales and online auctions. Additionally, as the economy gradually returns to pre-pandemic, quote, business as usual, NLEX is uniquely positioned to address the market opportunity around the anticipated increases in charged off and non-performing consumer asset sales. Finally, Heritage Global remains well positioned to benefit from rising demand, for capital by debt buyers as conventional lenders return to more aggressively offloading underperforming and charged off assets to manage credit losses. As I said earlier, we believe 2021 is off to a solid start and that we have a strong platform for which to capitalize on the interest and demand we are seeing for our services in both industrial and financial asset segments. With that, I'll now pass it to Brian Cobb, our VP of Finance. Brian will give you a deeper dive into our financials. Thank you all. Brian?