RiceBran Technologies

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rice Brand Technologies' fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call and webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Matt Chesler, with FNKIR. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Catherine, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome again to the Rice Brand Technologies' fourth quarter 2020 financial results conference call. With us today are Peter Bradley, Executive Chairman, and Todd Mitchell, Chief Financial Officer. I want to remind listeners that during the call today, management's prepared remarks may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Management may also make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions today. Therefore, the company claims protection under the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of these results and uncertainties in the company's filings with the SEC. In addition, any projections as to the company's future performance represented by management include estimates as of today, February 25, 2021, and the company assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions change. This webcast and certain Financial information provided on the call today, including reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures, are available at www.ricebrandtech.com on the investor relations page. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Peter. Peter, please go ahead.

Thank you, Matt, and we welcome you and Rob Fink to the Rice Brand team. Good afternoon, everyone. The fourth quarter was a productive one for Rice Brand. The notable improvements in our financial results underscore the meaningful transition within the company, which reinforces my confidence in our emerging strategy to transfer rice bran into a high growth, high margin specialty ingredient company. Over the past six months, we've successfully implemented what I refer to as phase one of this transition. This required tackling the immediate imperative to improve financial performance and initiating a broader change in our mindset to become the value-added supplier of specialty food ingredients. As we've discussed before, Golden Ridge created a significant drag on our business through 2020. However, towards the end of the third quarter, we installed new management at the mill and implemented a better structure for rice sales and procurement. And this drove significant improvements in the mill's operating and financial performance in the fourth quarter. And as important as to have our milling operations at Golden Ridge and MGI operate more effectively, we also reinvigorated our special ingredient focus by revitalizing our core stabilized rice bran, or as we refer to it as SRB, and the SRB derivatives businesses, successfully accelerating growth and enhancing margins for these businesses in the fourth quarter. And this momentum will continue into 2021, and we believe beyond. So how do we achieve this? Simply put, it is the mindset transition to specialty ingredients. The word specialty is often used in the food ingredients world, but let me explain what it means in practical terms to a company like RiceBrand. Simply put, it's a change of emphasis to margin from volume. Higher margins come from differentiated ingredients that provide higher value to customers. We transition to this mindset of specialty ingredients in the fourth quarter by expanding the availability of our high margin SRB derivatives, greenlighting new higher added value product introductions, and implementing a customer-focused sales structure supported by a margin-based incentive program. And as I said, it was this change in mindset, along with the improved performance of both our milling operations, which drove the significant improvement in our financial performance in the fourth quarter. And now with phase one of our turnaround complete, we've set the stage for the next phase, which will see us rolling out a series of initiatives to accelerate growth and transition to profitability in 2021. I will highlight some of our phase two initiatives in a minute, but first let me have Todd run you through the numbers in more detail.