SurgePays, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the SurgePay second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Pranovo, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Surge Pays Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Webcast and Conference Call. Today's date is August 10th, 2023, and on the call today from SurgePays are Brian Cox, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tony Evers, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements, as they are defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see SurgePay's most recent filings with the SEC. All forward-looking statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and we undertake no obligation to update any statements to reflect the events that occur after this call. Also during the course of today's call, the company will be discussing one or more non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release we issued this afternoon. Copies of today's press release are accessible on SurgePay's investor relations website, ir.surgepays.com. In addition, SurgePay's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30th, 2023 is also available on SurgePay's investor relations website. And now I'd like to turn the call over to President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Cox.

Thanks, Brian. First, I'd like to thank our shareholders and those interested in what we're building at SurgePace for joining the call. As we continue to expand our audience, I'd like to give a brief overview of who we are, what we do, and our addressable market. SurgePace brings financial and telecom products to the underbanked and underserved populations at a grassroots level where they live and shop. Our FinTech platform empowers clerks at thousands of convenience stores to provide a suite of prepaid wireless, and financial products to lower income and underbanked consumers. Our prepaid wireless companies provide service to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. With this profitable suite of underbanked products and services, we're well positioned to grow our footprint and owner-operator convenience stores nationwide with the goal of building the largest direct distribution network of underbanked products and services in the country. The underbanked are almost a third of the country and do most of their financial transactions at their trusted local community store that's closest to their home. The real influencer in these neighborhoods is the clerk behind the counter. SurgePays utilizes these convenience stores as the points of distribution into these communities. As we onboard the store to our software platform, we enable the clerk at the register to perform transactions such as prepaid wireless activation and payments, along with activating and reloading debit cards and other transactional services with the motive of improving the daily lives of those without traditional access to banks, credit, and checking accounts. In other words, provide essential products and services people need and want. One of the motivating aspects of our business case is that our revenue is directly tied to how many essential services we provide to those who need them most. The Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, has been the revenue driver for SurgePay's growth the last two years. When this program was stamped into the infrastructure bill, we shifted a majority of our short-term bandwidth to growing our base of subscribers to accomplish the goals of profitability, debt reduction, and stability. ACP offers a federal subsidy for a tablet device and monthly wireless service to recipients of any income-based government benefit. such as Medicaid, Veterans Pension, Section 8, and most notably the program historically called Food Stamps or EBT, which now goes by the name SNAP. Several wireless companies have licenses to offer the ACP program to the public. However, we are uniquely positioned as the only ACP company with its own customer relationship management software, CRM, platform integrated with the FCC's Clearinghouse database. and also into the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Further, we are the only authorized ACP company that owns one of the few prepaid transaction platforms that has a nationwide network of convenience stores. These competitive advantages paved the way for us to be the only ACP company able to initiate brick and mortar signups for ACP inside convenience stores. Store owners are always looking for more foot traffic and ways to create loyalty in their community. The industrial logic we applied to our platform is inescapable and so compelling that our intake team is working on a pipeline of over 25,000 stores that will soon have a surge pace presence with a staging target of less than 12 months. Our research shows in some areas, More than 30% of convenience stores and supermarket transactions use the SNAP EBT card. Every customer who pulls out that card is eligible for free service through ACP. Our research also has shown each one of these households that is qualified for ACP also has, on average, three to four smartphones on another prepaid wireless company plan. With our presence in these stores where these customers shop and the ability to pay their monthly prepaid bills at the same store, it's a fantastic launch pad for our non-ACP prepaid wireless subscriber push coming in the few months ahead of us. In this macro environment where interest rates on store inventory lines of credit are squeezing small business profits, The profitable relationship between SurgePays and the convenience store owner operator has created big opportunities where these owners are readily receptive to selling additional SurgePays products distributed to their store. The key phrase we focus on constantly is that a beneficial relationship with the store owner creates endless opportunities for sales. Our developers have been working to separate us further from the pack of convenience store fintech software companies. We are now testing customer facing LCD touchscreens at the register to promote our products, activate wireless subscribers, and create customer engagement. I'm really excited to transition into this equipment phase of what I think will be the flywheel of our business plan. This customer facing touchscreen at the register connected to our servers further solidifies our roots and abilities inside the store. It provides us with a 24-7 marketing opportunity to promote our products and enable customers to enter their own information as needed for various transactions. This opens many doors down the road for us and is the next step in advancement and a part of our strategy to solidify SurgePays as the innovative market leader in our space. Even with most of the team and developers energy focused on growth, I'm pleased to announce that the second quarter of 2023 continues the profitability trend that we began to see at the end of 2022, delivering net income of 6 million and EBITDA of 6.4 million. This puts us over 10 million in net income for the first two quarters with the expectation to continue this trajectory. As I mentioned in last quarter's call, The key metric is future new stores on our platform. More stores on our platform mean more wireless subscribers, more products on the shelf, more transactions over our FinTech platform, and more sales for individual stores. Surge Pays is now reaching beyond stores for ACP signups, leveraging the workforce of new partner organizations. You might have seen some of our announcements during the quarter. Our first partnership was with Parachute Connect, a social impact investor looking to drive ACP signups, leveraging the SurgePay platform. Parachute Connect is an arm of a larger investment firm that is devoting time, resources, and social media platforms to raise money for worthy causes. Through Parachute Connect, we can sign up ACP enrollees in city and state school systems, community service organizations, and public service organizations. We recently announced that we are partnering with the Boys and Girls Clubs on native lands to get those eligible household populations signed up. This setup allows Boys and Girls reps to leverage our platform, expanding our reach at minimal expense to surge pays. It's through the Parachute Connect relationship that we began working with the Boys and Girls Club. Lastly, on the partnership front in July, we announced a new partnership with LeadX. This partnership allows us to communicate directly on an ATM with individuals who might qualify for the ACP through tens of thousands of LEEDX ATMs. Most of these ATMs are located in owner operated convenience stores. In this case, if you're using an EBT card or other benefit card or reloadable debit card, you might see an ACP prompt from SurgePays for free wireless service via a full screen ad on the ATM. At this point, we've just begun to scratch the surface of the potential means SurgePace has to drive additional subscribers and stores. As always, we're focused on managing our cash and cash flow and deploying that cash to maximize growth with discipline. We expected second quarter revenues to align with first quarter revenues, precisely what happened but with even stronger positive cash flow. We anticipate the full benefit of these new partnerships beginning to bear fruit toward the end of the third quarter, with growth accelerating quickly and continuing in the year's second half. We expect 13,000 stores to operate on the SurgePays network by the end of the year and see positive operating cash flow during the year. I'll turn the call over to Tony to review our financial results before summarizing today's call. Tony?