Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the Alpha Metallurgical Resources fourth quarter 2020 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 one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Emily O'Quinn, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, let me remind you that during our prepared remarks and the Q&A period, our comments related to expected business and financial performance contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed. For more information regarding forward-looking statements and some of the factors that can affect them, please refer to the company's fourth quarter 2020 earnings release and the associated SEC filing. Please also see those documents for information about our use of non-GAAP measures and their reconciliation to GAAP measures. Participating on the call today are Alpha's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David Stetson, and President and Chief Financial Officer, Andy Edson. Also participating on the call is Jason Whitehead, our Chief Operating Officer. With that, I'll turn the call over to David.

Thanks, Emily. Good morning to everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us today. Part of the typical year-end reporting process for the fourth quarter results is also to consider the prior year as a whole, the challenges and opportunities it presented, how the leadership team responded, and what might be learned from the past 12 months to help us improve the path ahead. 2020 was anything but normal. And unfortunately, it was a year marked by disruption, uncertainty, and in many cases, extremely difficult circumstances due to the global pandemic. Both our industry and our company experienced tremendous adversity. Despite the headwinds, we weathered the uncertainty and ended the year with a strong sales book, a new record low in cost performance, and a clear foundation for leading the business forward. In fact, 2020 ended up being extremely productive and transformational year for Alpha. We set some big goals for ourselves at the end of 2019, and I'm proud to say we accomplished nearly all of them, even during a global pandemic. This is truly a situation where we put our heads down and did the work to deliver on our stated goals. Before we dive into the details of the fourth quarter, I want to touch on some of the accomplishments of the last year to put these achievements in perspective. I also want to point out that we have a new investor presentation on our website, and we invite investors to view our new presentation as it contains additional details, which include a number of the points that I'm going to be discussing this morning. As you heard me say many times before, we are working to become a pure play metallurgical producer. In the middle of the last year, we completed our exit from the Powder River Basin, idled the Kelty Thermal Mine, and the adjacent Del Barton Preparation Plant. In December, we divested our largest thermal property, the Cumberland Mine, thereby reducing our bonding collateral requirements and eliminating most thermal production from our portfolio. As a result of these moves away from thermal production, we executed a rebranding effort to better reflect our strategic vision for the future, while also returning to our alpha roots and our brand's rich heritage. We're now proudly hosting our first earnings call under our new name of Alpha Metallurgical Resources. We were already the largest and most diverse metallurgical coal company in the United States before these actions, but now I believe we're even better positioned to capitalize on a market turnaround. The investments we made in building out low-cost development mines are beginning to pay dividends as these capital expenditures are largely complete and the mines are now producing. In a few minutes, Jason will provide an update on our Black Eagle, Road Fork 52, and Lynn Branch mines. And our expectations are that these mines will have a cost profile of $70 per ton or less. Our asset base was already favorably positioned relative to our peers, but with the past year's fine tuning, I believe we are even better positioned for success. In the last year, we've also built on the foundational changes we made in 2019. that being a flatter, more nimble organizational structure that facilitates decision-making. This philosophy yielded the record-setting cost performance that we enjoyed over the last several quarters and reduced our overhead in SG&A by more than $10 million. We also completed a routine succession planning process toward the end of the year and, as a result, announced three important promotions among the executive team, with Andy Edson being named president and CFO Roger Nicholson was promoted to Chief Administrative Officer alongside his existing duties, and Dan Horn was elevated to Executive VP of Sales. Additionally, we have strengthened and diversified the company's leadership at the board level with four new directors, Ken Curtis, Liz Fessenden, Danny Smith, and Mike Quillen. As many of you know, Mike founded Alpha Natural Resources back in 2003. Together with our prior directors, I'm proud to to have such a high-qualified group of individuals and their vast breadth of knowledge and experience in place to help guide the company. In addition to the strides we made in transitioning to a pure-play metallurgical coal company and in solidifying our leadership and vision for the company, we also executed on improvement of one of our core tenets, working safely and responsibly. In a few minutes, Jason will share some details about our safety environmental performance and Andy will take us through the financial results of the fourth quarter. Before I hand the call over, I want to take a moment to address the market fluctuations we've seen in the last several months. We have been pleased to see increased demand for our products along with improved pricing, but we continue to focus on cash preservation while we await the impacts of higher pricing flowing through our sales contracts and ultimately into our accounts receivable. In looking ahead, For what the next several years will hold, I'm optimistic about the need for metallurgical coal in the national and global economic recoveries. With growing consensus building around the likelihood of a significant infrastructure spending, met coal will be a critical element of these efforts. And as the largest coal producer in the country, we are poised to play an important role in that work and look forward to doing so. With that, I will ask Jason to provide an operational update for us.