Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Alpha Metallurgical Resources Fourth Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Emily O'Quinn, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. You may begin.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, let me remind you that during our prepared remarks, our comments regarding anticipated 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 and full year 2023 earnings release and the associated SEC filings. 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 ALSA's Chief Executive Officer, Andy Edson, and our President and Chief Operating Officer, Jason Whitehead. Also participating on the call are Todd Muncy, our Chief Financial Officer, and Dan Horn, our Chief Commercial Officer. With that, I will turn the call over to Andy.

Thanks, Emily. Good morning, everyone. This morning, we announced our fourth quarter results with adjusted EBITDA of $266 million. For the full year, Alpha generated over a billion dollars in adjusted EBITDA, which marks the second year in a row achieving that milestone. While 2023 was not without its challenges, I couldn't be prouder of the way that we responded as a company to those challenges and finished the year strong. The team did an excellent job of identifying issues, building a battle plan, and executing decisively to overcome whatever obstacle we faced. We ended the year within or better than nearly all of our guidance ranges having shipped a total of 17 million tons with 15.3 million of that being met coal. Our overall met segment costs for the year were in line at $111.67, while costs in the all other category came in better than guidance. SG&A, aisle operations expense, DD&A, and tax rate all ended the year within our guidance range. CapEx came in at $245.4 million, which is technically below the low end of the given range. However, when adding the $21 million of carryover that we have rolled into 2023, that puts us nearly exactly at the midpoint of our issued guidance for last year. Another milestone we reached during the fourth quarter was exceeding $1 billion in the share repurchase program. Since the program's inception in March of 2022, we have returned more than $1.1 billion to stockholders in the form of buybacks, repurchasing over 6.6 million shares of alpha stock. We remain committed to our previously stated strategy of utilizing available free cash flow for the program as the preferred method of returning capital contingent upon minimum cash levels and market conditions. As we look ahead, the board has set May the 2nd as the date of our next annual meeting of stockholders. And this morning we announced a list of director candidates who will stand for election to our board at that meeting. We also announced that following significant tenures with the company, two of our current directors have reached the age at which they may no longer stand for election per our corporate governance guidelines. And they've retired from the board effective today. Al Ferrara is our longest serving director, having been with us since 2016. Al has set the template for how an audit committee should be led and we appreciate how his influence has particularly impacted the finance and accounting functions of the company. Mike Quillen, and what can you say about Mike that hasn't already been said, he started this whole thing back in 2002 when he founded Alpha Natural Resources, and he's devoted much of the last two decades to building this company and seeing it through to its current success. It's hard to imagine the board without these two longstanding directors, but we've been blessed to have them at Alpha for as long as we have. And as we announced this morning, Liz Fessenden has also retired from the board effective today. We will miss Liz very much. She's been a director since 2021 and served as chair of the board safety health and environmental committee. She's overseen a time of great accomplishment in environmental and safety awards, better than the national average performance across the portfolio and back-to-back company records in 2022 and 23 for NFDL and TRIR respectively. I personally want to thank Liz for her support over the past year in particular. She's been a great source of encouragement and a wonderful mindset coach during my first year in this seat. We appreciate her leadership and wish her all the best. The good thing for me is that all these folks are still on my speed dial list. The bad thing for them is that all these folks are on my speed dial list, so I will be making frequent use of that list. In connection with these departures, the board sizes contracted from nine to seven seats, and we're excited to welcome a new and highly qualified individual to our board with the appointment of Shelly Lombard. Shelly comes to us with more than 35 years of experience on Wall Street and in other areas of the financial sector. She'll be a valuable addition to our board and audit committee, and I can't wait to begin working with her. I'll now turn it over to Todd for discussion of our fourth quarter and four-year financial results.