Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to the Alpha Metallurgical Resources First Quarter 2024 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 now 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 first quarter 2024 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 gap measures. Participating on the call today are ALPHA'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'll turn the call over to Andy.

Thanks, Emily, and good morning, everyone. Today we announce financial results for first quarter 2024 with adjusted EBITDA of $190 million. This was another solid quarter of work from the alpha team, despite some challenging circumstances and a significant softening of met coal markets starting in March. Since the quarter closed, we witnessed further deterioration in market fundamentals, which sets up a challenging backdrop for the second quarter. Although our Q2 performance will obviously reflect the market environment in which we're operating, I remain confident in alpha's strength and ability to weather volatility. For more than a few years now, we've used the word nimble to describe how we prefer to operate, constantly evaluating lots of data to find areas that can be optimized or to plug cost leaks. We believe that this approach is valuable in all market conditions, but especially in down cycles when quickly adapting to economic reality becomes a true necessity. In response to the sharp market decline that has occurred so far in 2024, we've made small adjustments to safely reduce costs where possible by optimizing production and logistics. Given our size and scale, the magnitude of these changes doesn't impact our previously announced volume expectations for the year, but these adjustments are allowing us to respond appropriately to deterioration in the market. We will continue monitoring external market drivers while also maintaining a close eye on controllable costs within our business, and we'll take further action as necessary. As I visit our operations and talk with employees, I'm consistently impressed by the alpha drive to overcome challenges and make the most of difficult circumstances. Our first quarter performance is yet another example of this determination. Subjectively, I see it in mine visits, but there's also objective measures that don't get a lot of attention. One in particular is a productivity metric called tons per man hour. As is always the case, safe production is our highest priority at Alpha, and we continually promote a safety mindset first and foremost. And somewhat counterintuitively, we usually see that safety, efficiency, and productivity go hand in hand. MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, aggregates droves of data each quarter, including production by operator and tons per man hour, which is exactly as it sounds. As a company, Alpha consistently performs well and has led the pack in this measurement among room and pillar, were continuous miner operators for the last eight quarters. Despite the well-known differences between continuous miners and long-wall operations, Alpha's operations often perform well against certain long-wall operations too. I'm proud to say that in Q1, Alpha led all of our notable peers, long-wall operators included, with a tons-per-hour metric roughly 14% more productive than the next operator in line. That kind of safe, consistent performance is a testament to the skill and effectiveness of our teams. We encourage this behavior among our operations and are consistently looking for ways to maintain this industry-leading position. During our fourth quarter earnings call, we discussed our intention to slow or pause the buyback program in an effort to build cash balances back up to our targeted levels. Especially given the market dynamics currently at play, we continue to believe this is the right strategy. Our capital return philosophy remains the same and will continue to be driven by our cash flow. As minimum cash levels and market conditions allow, We will utilize available free cash flow for the buyback program. Lastly, we hosted our annual meeting of stockholders on May 2nd. This meeting included a vote to elect members of our board of directors. All seven of our board members were elected by the shareholders to serve a term of one year. The full results of the annual meeting have been provided through our SEC filings. I'll now turn it over to Todd for additional details regarding our first quarter financial results.