RiceBran Technologies

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rice Brand Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call and webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Rob Fink. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Rice Brand Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results conference call. Hosting the call today are Peter Bradley, Executive Chairman, and Todd Mitchell, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. I want to remind participants that during the call, 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 that is contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from results discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties, which is contained in the company's filings with the SEC. In addition, any projections as to the company's future performance represented by management, including estimates as of today, March 17, 2022, and a company assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future as market conditions may change. This webcast and certain financial information provided on the call, including reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures, are available at ricebrandtech.com on the investor relations page. With all that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to Peter. Peter, the call is yours.

Thank you, Rob, and good afternoon to everyone. 2021 was a year of unprecedented disruption that impacted every aspect of the food industry, from raw material shortages and price escalation to the inability to run manufacturing operations successfully due to labor shortages and the challenge from logistics to both domestic and international supply chains. Despite these conditions, we have successfully streamlined operations, improved execution, and eliminated drags on our business. We have shifted our focus from commodity products addressing small, lower growth markets to high-value add ingredients addressing broad and growing markets. The results can be seen in top-line growth, expanded margins, and narrowed losses. For certain, these unprecedented disruption challenged us, especially in the areas of labor and freight. But we navigated through these challenges and we exited the year with strong momentum as evidenced by positive EBITDA in December from every one of our businesses, a first for our company and a clear indication that we're on the right path and making tangible progress towards our goal of sustainable growth and positive cash flow. Ironically, the disrupted environment helped to accelerate our transformation. For many customers, the year delivered structural turmoil. While we saw modestly higher import prices, many ingredients used by our customers saw materially higher inflation and in some cases were simply unavailable. While logistics challenges delayed deliveries and raised costs for us, Some customers saw ingredients rotting on cargo ships stuck on the outside of ports. Many companies need alternatives immediately, and they needed domestic alternatives to overseas sources. We were able to capitalize on this situation by offering a reasonably priced, high-quality, domestically sourced solution. Suddenly, the cost of relabeling for a rice-based alternative ingredient wasn't so daunting and initiatives we have been pursuing for some time moved forward much more quickly. And we just started to see the benefit of this transition. We are growing our existing relationships and we are attracting significantly more new business in new end markets than we've ever seen before. As a result, we are meaningfully expanding our addressable market and we expect to see much more significant impact from this expansion in 2022. We benefit from growth as it provides a solid and more sustainable revenue base. At modestly higher revenue levels, we believe we can break even. And as we continue to grow, we should see operating leverage expand our gross margin, leading to sustainable profitability. We've built a viable, streamlined, efficient platform for profitable growth. During the past year, we've introduced several new product lines. In 2022, we'll introduce even more. We'll expand our presence as a trusted provider of high-value added ingredients for large-scale and more rapidly growing markets. I'll give you some more detail on our progress on this front in a minute. But first, let's have Todd run you through the numbers for the quarter in more detail.