Westrock Coffee Company

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Westrock Coffee Company's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 1-1 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Melissa Calandruchio, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to West Rock Coffee Company's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. With us are Mr. Scott Ford, co-founder and chief executive officer, and Mr. Chris Pledger, chief financial officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's fourth quarter earnings release issued earlier today. This information is available on the investor relations section of the West Rock Coffee Company's website, at investors.westrockcoffee.com. Certain comments made on this call include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future events and are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press release and other filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. Also, discussions during the call will use some non-GAAP financial measures as we describe business performance. The SEC filings, as well as the earnings press release, provide reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. And with that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Scott Ford, our co-founder and chief executive officer.

Thank you, Melissa, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. The year 23 was a significant transition year for West Drunk. When we entered last year, we knew it was going to be a long year of system upgrades and equipment installations. And as we explained on our quarterly calls throughout the year, the impact of these upgrades on our business were material and sometimes painful, even if wholly necessary. We now enter 2024 on the backside of a number of important system migrations, capital equipment upgrades, and with the new extract and ready to drink facility in Conway, Arkansas, on schedule for delivery of our first commercially available products next month. After enduring the expenses brought about by these significant upgrades and improvements, we now enter the year 2024 with the infrastructure in place to scale this business multiple fold and with our current adjusted EBITDA run rate already 30 to 40% above our year-end results for 2023. This is due to the unrelenting and unwavering work by the entire Westrock team our vendor partners, and our customers. My heartfelt gratitude extends to each and every one of them. As we turn to 24, I'll remind you that we announced our 24 annual adjusted EBITDA forecast in connection with our select milk joint venture and convertible note offering announcements last month. Today, we're pleased to reiterate that our guidance for our expected adjusted EBITDA for the year 2024 should be up somewhere between 30% and 75% for the year. We have recently enjoyed several new contract wins on each of our platforms from roast and ground coffee and tea to single serve cups to extracts and to ready to drink finished goods. And while the impact of most of these new wins is slated to come online in the back half of the year, some are already starting to make modest contributions to our profitability even now. I'd like to thank everyone who has supported us through the long two-year process of modernizing and expanding our incumbent facilities, as well as constructing the new extract and RTD facility in Conway. It's required tremendous effort, persistence, and patience on everyone's part, and it is a delight to be able to walk through these plants today and see the new commercial realities of these investments coming to life. We chose to bear the pain of fully modernizing all parts of our business in 2023 so that when the new Conway facility was launched, those challenges would be seen in our rearview mirror and not in our face. It was an extremely difficult year because of this. There's no doubt about that. But we are now thrilled that these challenges are behind us, and we are extremely excited for 2024. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Chris Fledger, our CFO, for a review of our financial results.