Vertex Energy, Inc

Good day and welcome to the Vertex Energy fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the start key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press more than one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star than two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Ragazzino of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Vertex Energy's fourth quarter and full year 2022 results conference call. Leading the call today are Chairman and CEO Ben Cowart, Chief Financial Officer Chris Carlson, and Chief Operating Officer James Rame. Also attending the call are Chief Strategy Officer Alvaro Ruiz, Vice President Bart Rice, and Vice President of Black Oil Operations, John Strickland. I want to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the risk factor section of Vertex Energy's latest annual and quarterly filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP financial measures discussed during our call in the press release issued today. Today's call will begin with remarks from Ben Cowart, followed by an operational review from James Rehm, and financial review from Chris Carlson. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ben.

Thank you, John. And good morning to those joining us on the call today. This morning we issued a press release detailing our financial and operating results for the fourth quarter of 2022. We are pleased to report the continued safe and reliable operations with the improved financial and operating results which exceeded our prior expectations. We feel these results reflect the true earnings potential of our conventional fuels business at the Mobile Refinery facility, which contributed the majority of our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of $75.2 million. Reportive results benefited significantly for continued strength in conventional fuels refining margins. Increased market exposure following the expiration of our prior hedge positions beginning on September 30th. Attractive refining yields of high margin distillate products following the turnaround were performed in the third quarter. Operationally, we reported strong throughput volumes of approximately 78,000 barrels per day for the quarter, 5.4% ahead of our midpoint of our prior guidance issued in November. Our product yield profile and premium pricing for diesel and jet fuels drove a strong capture rate of 61%, which exceeded our prior outlook of 52%, and generated very attractive refining profitability on a per barrel basis. In addition, we made notable progress on several strategic initiatives aimed at streamlining our business. First, We continue to expand our team by adding experienced talent throughout our key areas of the business. Secondly, we recently completed the sale of our Heartland UMO business, enhancing our ability further to prioritize the optimization of our current refining business. And third, we have continued advancement of our construction of our RD conversion project for own schedule mechanical completion by end of March. with carefully planned startup early second quarter of this year. I'm proud of our employees and contractors who work together for the results achieved for 2022. The transition from our legacy operations to the advantage position we find ourselves in today would not be possible without the team's relentless pursuit of our goals while keeping safe and reliable operations as our highest priority. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to James Rain, our Chief Operating Officer, who will provide a detailed update on our operations during the quarter, including a more detailed update on the status of our renewable diesel conversion project in Mobile.