BKV Corporation

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to BKV's full year and fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded, and at this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. David Tamaron, Vice President of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining BKB Corporation's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. With me today are Chris Kalnan, Chief Executive Officer, Eric Jacobson, President of Upstream, and John Jimenez, Chief Financial Officer. Before we provide our prepared remarks, I would like to remind all participants that our comments today will include forward-looking statements which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual results could differ materially from those in any forward-looking statements. Additionally, we may refer to non-GAAP measures. For more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements, as well as any reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures, please see the company's public filings, including the Form 8-K filed earlier today. We have also posted an updated investor presentation on our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Chris Kalman.

Thank you, David. And thank you, everyone, for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. I want to take a moment to reflect on the truly transformational year BKB had in 2024. Throughout the year, BKB delivered solid business performance, driven largely by impressive results from our upstream operations. We also gained momentum in our power business, actively engaging with prospective customers in the data center sector. Our CCUS initiatives progressed with an additional FID on a new carbon capture project, as well as significant steps towards securing a financial joint venture partner. At the same time, we maintained a strong balance sheet, providing us with the flexibility to advance our businesses across all our vectors. And of course, we marked the year with a major milestone by making our debut on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of September. BKV is redefining the concept of an energy company by combining traditional and new energy approaches to offer integrated energy solutions that deliver value to customers. With four business lines, including power, carbon capture, upstream, and midstream, BKV BKV's businesses generate value standalone and, in combination, create a winning formula of decarbonized, around-the-clock energy that is scalable, sustainable, and profitable. The power markets, in particular, are evolving rapidly, and I'd like to highlight some key trends shaping our power strategies. Our PowerJV is anchored on two modern and highly efficient combined cycle natural gas power plants that have a capacity of 1,500 megawatts and are located in Temple, Texas. Power generation is a key growth driver for the company, given the recent power demand forecasts across the U.S. and in the Texas ERCOT market. The power generation business in ERCOT represents a compelling growth opportunity for BKV. Rapid demand growth in ERCOT is driven by several key factors, including electrification, increasing consumer and industrial demand, and importantly, data center and generative AI demand growth. ERCOT's 2024 long-term load forecast estimates overall demand could reach 150 gigawatts by 2030, nearly doubling the 2023 peak load of 85 gigawatts, with data center developments accounting for approximately half of this growth. During the fourth quarter, our Power JV took proactive steps to enhance operational readiness of the temple complex, which involved maintenance on our combined cycle turbines and our steam turbine units. Through these activities, we have positioned ourselves to maximize uptime during peak demand periods, especially during the winter and summer months. In the near term, we have seen prices moderate due to benign weather conditions in Texas and new renewable additions to the grid. However, overall, we remain bullish about ARCOT's long-term demand growth and scarcity pricing, as demand growth is projected to outpace supply additions, particularly baseload supply. Our power business has multiple vectors of growth. First, we have the ability to increase the utilization of our existing assets through higher capacity factors as demand for baseload power increases in the market. Second, BKV is active in the M&A markets and expects significant opportunities for transactions in the next few years. Third, BKV has commissioned a study to explore building additional combined cycle units similar to our temple plants to address the projected mismatch between structural demand growth and baseload supply, as we believe there are customers focused on securing power from new generation assets. BKV's power business model is unique in our ability to decarbonize the natural gas that we combust in our power plants through our carbon capture business. This unique feature is important to future customers. BKV remains bullish on the carbon capture industry, recognizing its vital role in decarbonizing the global economy. In the U.S., carbon capture enjoys strong bipartisan support, including from the current presidential administration. The economic incentives driving its development, such as the 45Q tax credit enacted by Congress and codified in the Internal Revenue Code, have demonstrated resilience across multiple administrations. BKV is solidifying our leadership position in this business. The evidence of this is in our FID progress and project pipeline that we are continuing to execute. Further, we are in exclusive negotiations with a global energy transition investor to become a joint venture partner in our carbon capture business. As part of these negotiations, we have mutually agreed to a timeline to finalize definitive agreements and complete standard due diligence within the next 90 to 120 days. We believe EKV's CCUS business is standalone attractive, and we are in a position to drive our CCUS growth independently. At the same time, we believe a financial partner could help us accelerate this business growth accretively. Later, Eric will talk about the momentum we have at a project level to drive our overall CCUS business. We had a strong border in our upstream business. Our upstream business continues to be the cash engine driving our ability to grow across all our business lines. We are extremely excited about the strong results from this last quarter. Not only did we see solid performance, but these results also highlight how our business is strategically positioned with low decline rates, allowing us to navigate periods of lower pricing. At the same time, we are able to reinvest, grow production, and capture favorable pricing. Overall, I'm very pleased with our team's performance and our continued ability to navigate dynamic market conditions and drive towards the execution of aspirational goals. We remain focused on executing our strategy and delivering value to our shareholders across all our business lines. Now I'd like to hand the call over to BKB's President of Upstream, Eric Jacobson, to discuss operational specifics for the quarter. Eric, over to you.