Montauk Renewables, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. John Ciroli, as he provides some important cautions regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures contained in earnings materials or made on this call. John, please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Welcome to Montauk Renewable's earnings conference call to review the third quarter 2023 financial and operating results and developments. I'm John Ciroli, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary at Montauk. Joining me today are Sean McClain, Montauk's President and Chief Executive Officer to discuss business developments, and Kevin Van Aslen, Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our third quarter 2023 financial and operating results. At this time, I would like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement. During this call, certain comments we make constitute forward-looking statements, and as such, involve a number of assumptions, risks, and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results or performance to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risk factors and uncertainties are detailed in Montauk Renewable's SEC filings. Our remarks today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. We present EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA metrics because we believe these measures assist investors in analyzing our performance across reporting periods on a consistent basis by excluding items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with the generally accepted accounting principles. Additional details regarding these non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, can be found in our slide presentation and in our third quarter 2023 earnings press release and Form 10Q issued and filed this afternoon. Those are available also on our website at ir.montaukrenewables.com. And after our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. We ask that you please keep the one question to accommodate as many questions as possible. And with that, I will turn the call over to Sean McClain. Thank you, John.

Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. During the third quarter of 2023, industry-wide D3 RIN generation decreased approximately 8% when comparing RIN generation in July 2023 to September 2023, as reported by the US EPA. This compares to an approximately 6.6% increase in industry-wide RIN generation from July 2022 to September 2022. We believe contributing factors to the Q3 2023 reduction in D3 RIN generation could include drought weather anomalies of lower than average rainfall and higher than average temperatures. As some of our production facilities experienced these weather anomalies, and as Kevin will explain more, our production during the third quarter of 2023 was similarly impacted. In the third quarter of 2023, Our Board of Directors approved funding for the first phase of our Swine Waste to Renewable Energy Development Initiative in North Carolina. Including the approximately 24 million of cumulative expenditures through Q3 2023, we currently expect the first phase total capital investment to range between 140 and 160 million. We currently expect to have the first of eight processing reactor trains operational during the first half of 2024. We are currently planning for a rolling commissioning schedule for the remaining processing lines beginning in the second half of 2024 and continuing through the second half of 2025. We expect revenue generation to commence in 2025. Upon completion of this first phase of the project, we expect to have sufficient capacity to satisfy the Duke Energy REC contract through the deployment of up to eight of our patented reactors. At first full phase processing capacity, we anticipate the ability to process feedstock from over 120,000 hog spaces per day, equating to over 200 tons of waste collection per day. The first phase of this project is expected to produce approximately 45 to 50,000 megawatt hour equivalents. through a combination of 190,000 to 200,000 NMVTUs and 25,000 to 30,000 megawatt hours. We also expect the first phase of the project will produce approximately 17,000 to 20,000 tons of charred soil enhancement annually. Related to our PECO dairy digestion capacity increase project, During the third quarter of 2023, we commissioned additional digestion capacity and our new reception pit. We have begun utilizing the increased reception pit capacity and have been working to increase gas availability through the additional digestion capacity. We expect to commission the last expansion of our digestion capacity increase during the fourth quarter of 2023 that will be necessary to process the final tranche of increased feedstock. our dairy host informed us they expect to deliver that final increase in feedstock volumes in 2025, at which time we will make the final contractual payment to the dairy. And with that, I will turn the call over to Kevin.