Ramaco Resources, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Ramico Resources second quarter 2024 results 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 telephone keypad. 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 Jeremy Sussman, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. On behalf of Ramico Resources, I'd like to welcome all of you to our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. With me this morning is Randy Atkins, our Chairman and CEO, Chris Blanchard, our EVP for Mine Planning and Development, and Jason Fanning, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we start, I'd like to share our normal cautionary statement. Certain items discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent Ramico's expectations concerning future events. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are outside of Ramico's control which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and except as required by law, Ramico does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'd like to remind you that you can find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures that we plan to discuss today in our press release which can be viewed on our website, www.ramicoresources.com. Lastly, I'd encourage everyone on this call to go onto our website and download today's investor presentation. With that said, let me introduce our Chairman and CEO, Randy Atkins. Randy Atkins Thanks, Jomi.

Good morning to everyone, and thanks for joining the call. As we had hoped, our second quarter results were much better than our first, both on operations and financially. This improvement came in spite of the continued softness in the global coal pricing. Last quarter, we saw U.S. met coal indices drop by 15%, and they're now down 25% since the start of the year. We also made some solid progress this quarter on our REE project in Wyoming, which I will mention later. Turning first to our met coal operations, importantly, we had record production. This was up about 7% to 900,000 tons in the second quarter. This increase was largely due to a combination of better productivity, geology, and labor availability. As a result of the stronger production and more tons, our cash costs declined 8% or by roughly $10 to $108 per ton in the second quarter. Looking forward, both operational and financial results should continue to improve throughout the year. as our growth projects come online. In a nutshell, we're expecting to ramp to a year-end run rate in excess of 5 million tons on both production and sales, with costs hopefully at or below the $100 per ton cash cost range. Let me take a moment and walk through our four current production growth projects for this year. All of these remain on track and on budget. Two growth initiatives relate to our high vol production at Elk Creek and two relate to our low vol production at Berwyn and Maven. At Elk Creek, we are adding the Ram 3 surface high vol mine and a third section at the Stone Coal Alma mine. Combined, they will increase our overall 24 production by roughly 600,000 high vol tons on an annualized basis. Both of these mines had already begun to ramp up as of this June. At Berwyn's main mine, we are adding a third section starting in the fourth quarter. This should add roughly 300,000 tons of low vol production on an annualized basis. Importantly, costs at all four of these new four mines are anticipated to be roughly $90 to $95 per ton on a combined basis. Finally, we expect the prep plant at our Mabin complex to be fully operational this fall. While this won't add to our overall 24 production, it should meaningfully reduce our current trucking costs at Mabin by approximately $40 per ton. If you step back and look at the impact of these growth projects, again, we see a lot of operating parallels between this year and last. In 2023, our second half was much stronger than the first, where we essentially went from being a three to a four million ton per year production company. In the first half of 24, we remained at this four million ton run rate, but we also invested in the growth initiatives I mentioned. Again, we should exit the year at a five million ton run rate on both production and sales. And turning to the met coal markets, both the U.S. and global met coal indices have continued to fall meaningfully throughout the year. This drop has, of course, negatively impacted our price realizations across the board. The biggest reason was simply muted overall global economic and steel demand. This was coupled with China's slower internal growth and overproduction of steel and a corresponding dumping of this steel in the world markets. It's tough to expect strong met coal pricing when the world is awash in cheap steel. Unfortunately, we've seen the highest level of Chinese steel exports in a number of years. This is continuing to hurt both pricing and demand in our traditional European and U.S. markets. Looking to the second half of the year, we hope these markets will move higher. We have unfortunately recently seen a number of high-profile mine incidents this year. This has impacted global production and should lead to more muted supply in the second half. Also, at this point, both Indian elections and their monsoon season is almost behind us. Next month, we anticipate Indian demand should accelerate. And lastly, we possibly will see the start to see some worldwide tariffs and other restrictions placed on Chinese steel exports. Indeed, Chile became the first this morning to impose a steel tariff on China. These types of tariffs could boost our traditional markets, but given the political nature of any curtailments, we will have to wait and see. And looking ahead, it's too early to really handicap the 2025 domestic sale negotiations. I would like to point out, however, that we enter this year from somewhat of a unique positive sales position. Before we have even engaged in the 2025 domestic tenders, we have already committed 1.25 million tons for next year from primarily multi-year export index link contracts. Currently, these contracts would have an average net back price of roughly $150 per ton against fixed prices and current curve indexes. That puts us in a nice strategic position as we decide how to move forward. I might add that today we have less than 250,000 tons left to place for calendar 24. Most of this is our higher quality low vol and mid vol blends that we are frankly shepherding to sell in the fourth quarter, hopefully into a healthier pricing environment. Switching gears to our critical minerals front, we continue to make strong progress in terms of the development of the Brook Mine in Wyoming. You'll recall that our project is unique because we are focused on extracting rare earths from unconventional coal and carbon concentrated deposits, not radioactive hard minerals like others. We're currently advancing on the chemical, metallurgical, and mineralogical testing of our cores. And once we get the results this fall, our consultant Weir International will update our previous exploration target report. Importantly, we're also on track to complete our techno-economic analysis of the overall commercial aspects of the opportunity later this year. As we announced yesterday, we will be working with the Fluor Corporation on this, who we've also worked with in the past. As an aside, the development of a rare earth mine requires a tremendous amount of upfront testing in a number of disciplines, far beyond that of a typical coal mine. In our case, this involves a large amount of core drilling and chemical testing to develop a geospatial mapping of where best to locate the highest concentrations of REEs, as well as the best techniques to surgically mine and remove the ores. We're now working with NETL on developing some novel AI assessment techniques to improve on our recoveries. We're also spending a great deal of effort to determine the optimal processing technique for our slate of heavy and medium magnetic rare earths, as well as critical minerals. As I mentioned, we recently brought the Fluor Corporation on board as our senior technical advisor to help coordinate preparing our techno-economic analysis. FLUR will also assist with the design and engineering of our demonstration facility, which we hope to begin construction on by mid-year 2025. We still have an immense amount of testing and planning to complete, but we're optimistic that starting with our demonstration facility, that we'll be in a position to start commercial operation. We'll, of course, continue to provide granular updates on our rare earth activity as the year progresses. Also, one personal highlight for me each year is hosting the Ramico Research Rodeo in Wyoming, which is what we call the R3. We believe this may be one of the leading research conferences focused on coal-to-products research, rare earth element exploration, artificial intelligence, and critical minerals. We hold it out in Sheridan, Wyoming while the real Sheridan Rodeo goes on every night of that week. Last month was our fourth annual R3 conference. We hosted it again in partnership with an affiliate of the International Energy Agency in Paris. It brought together several congressional leaders in the energy space, leadership from the Department of Energy, as well as leading scientists from around the world. We even had the FBI speak on counterintelligence in the carbon research space. Frankly, the R3 gives us an opportunity to keep a leading edge in the newest technologies and development of coal-based products, as well as rare earths. And we hope to be discussing some new developments on all these fronts later this year. So in summary, we had a much stronger second quarter, both operationally and financially, despite dealing with a much lower pricing environment. We know we can't control price, but we try to control our production and cash costs. And if the markets continue to remain generally weak, we'll try and continue to operate with a combination of aggression, agility, and prudence. In the second half, we'll look forward to executing on our twin fronts of growing our met coal production and reducing our mine costs. And we'll also continue to advance the commercial development of our Brook mine. So with that, I'd like to turn the floor over to the rest of our team to discuss finances, operations, and markets. And we'll start with Jeremy to give us a rundown on financial metrics.