Charah Solutions, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Shara Solutions Inc. Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instruction will be given at that time if you would like to ask a question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Steve Brown, Vice President of Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary for Shara Solutions. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your participation in our third quarter 2020 earnings call and look forward to sharing our prepared remarks and answering your questions. We hope that you have had a chance to review the press release we issued yesterday after market closed. If not, you can find the press release as well as a supplemental investor presentation you may follow during our prepared remarks on the investor section of our website at www.shara.com or ir.shara.com. Joining me on today's call are Scott Sewell, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Roger Shannon, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Following their prepared remarks, we will conduct the customary question and answer session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our remarks regarding SHARA solutions include statements that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those disclosed in our earnings press releases and conference calls. Those risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings press release as well as in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our annual reports on Form 10-K. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. During this conference call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. We provide reconciliations to the nearest applicable GAAP measure in our earnings press release and supplemental presentation. Again, thank you for joining us today. Now, I would like to turn over the call to Scott Sewell, our President and CEO. Scott?

Good morning, everyone. It's great to have you join us for our earnings call today. I'm happy to be speaking with you again and providing an update on our third quarter performance. This morning, I'll briefly review our third quarter accomplishments, provide an update on current business developments, and update you on our pipeline opportunities. I'll then transition the call to Roger for a review of our financial performance during the quarter and an update on our 2020 guidance. We continue to see an acceleration of customer activity relative to the $75 billion coal ash market opportunity and have committed to strengthen our balance sheet, reduce debt, and maintain a laser focus on pursuing these growth opportunities and fully capitalizing on our industry-leading reputation. The team continues to perform well in this challenging COVID environment. and we are pleased with our progress as we continue working to convert our pending bids pipeline of over $4.5 billion. We hope to be making some exciting award announcements soon. Though our third quarter results were below expectations, primarily driven by low ash production resulting from COVID-19-related decreases in energy demand and severe hurricane activity in the southeast, we remain optimistic about the near-term and long-term prospects for Schar Solutions as we continue to work with our major utility customers to meet their remediation and byproduct recycling requirements. As highlighted in our press release, we continue to see significant increases in new award opportunities resulting from our customers' announced and expected remediation initiatives. We now have over $1.2 billion in new awards, primarily driven by the extension of the Exelon fleet-wide nuclear maintenance and modification contract from July 2022 to August 2025. We have outpaced last year's record for new awards, and we expect that significant new awards will advance in our environmental solutions segment through the remainder of the year and into 2021. Our customers continue to seek our environmentally friendly, customized solutions to recycling and remediating coal ash. Our ability to continue to provide essential daily operations and remediation services for our mission critical utility customers during this period of high uncertainty and disruptions caused by COVID-19 pandemic speaks to the safety operations plan and procedures we have implemented, the resiliency of our team, and the essential nature of our services. We expect the growth in business opportunities to continue as utility companies increasingly develop and implement their plans to address the more than 1,000 regulatory mandated service impoundment closures in the United States. The sustained ongoing level of activity in our business development has never been higher. In addition to our $4.5 billion in pending proposals, we have an additional $11 billion in near-term pipeline opportunities that we will bid over the next two years. As we have discussed on previous calls, states are becoming more prescriptive as to the means and methods of ash pond remediation, and the Environmental Protection Agency continues working with several states to establish their own ash recycling permit programs. Further, the EPA continues to work on its regulatory requirements, beneficiation guidelines, and ash pond impoundment closure deadlines. We continue to see these movements as positive for Charlotte Solutions. As the only full-service provider of mission-critical ash management operations, environmental remediation and compliance services, maintenance and outage services, and byproduct sales for the utility industry, the company is ideally situated to partner with these utilities to deliver on their impoundment closure requirements and needs. In addition to the pipeline of remediation projects, We are also increasing opportunities to provide creative solutions to utilities by expanding our Environmental Risk Transfer Services, or ERT. We recently announced that we are in negotiations with a public utility in Texas to deliver our unique ERT solution, and we're successfully performing ERT project with a utility in the Upper Midwest. We believe our ERT offerings deliver turnkey environmental solutions to utilities while providing attractive growth opportunities and returns for SARA solutions. We also remain optimistic about our byproduct sales opportunities driven by expectations for greater infrastructure spend as we continue to expand the reach of our multi-source materials network and add new customers. Our ability to continue to add new customers and new awards with our utility partners during this uncertain time speaks to our team's resiliency and the essential natures of our services. Among the $4.5 billion of pending proposals, we are in contract negotiation on several projects and expect to make official award announcements soon. As we head into the winter season with the potential for an uptick in COVID-19 activity, our highest priority remains the safety of our employees and customers. We remain committed to keeping our people safe, addressing our customers' needs, and growing the business. Charter Solutions provides essential services to regulated utilities that must continue operating to provide power to the country. We continue to believe we are well prepared to protect our staff and ensure the continuity of service to our customers during this time. I am very proud of the way we have partnered with our utility customers to maintain service safely, and I want to thank again our dedicated Charter Solutions employees. who are working every day to help our utility customers keep providing electricity. Finally, on behalf of the entire Shara Solutions team, I want to again express our sincere gratitude to all the first responders, medical personnel, and all others who continue working tirelessly to address the consequences of this pandemic. With that, I'll turn it over to Roger who will discuss our third quarter financial results, our outlook for 2020 in more detail, and provide more clarity on our expectations in the current market environment.