Charah Solutions, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Shara Solutions third quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Steve Brown. Vice President of Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary of Shara Solutions.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your participation in our third quarter 2021 earnings call, and we look forward to sharing our prepared remarks and answering your questions. We hope you have had a chance to review the press release we issued yesterday after the 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 today on our call are Scott Sewell, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Roger Shannon, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Following their prepared remarks, we will conduct a customary question and answer session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the remarks regarding SHARA's solution include statements that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainty that could cause actual results to be materially different from those disclosed in our earnings 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 the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our annual reports on Form 10-K. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. During this conference call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. We provide reconciliations to the nearest applicable GAAP measures in our earnings press release and supplemental presentation. Again, thank you for joining us today. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Scott Sewell, our president and CEO.

Scott? Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our earnings call today. We have had a very successful year to date with excellent progress in capitalizing on opportunities for significant new business. with 2021 already setting a new record for awards. We are optimistic about the remainder of this year, as well as our continued market opportunities. During the third quarter, we continued to execute in ramping up new project awards and advancing our ERP projects. We maintained a strong safety and operational record during a challenging environment resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and a tight labor market. Our financial results for the quarter reflect this performance. As you hopefully saw in our press release last evening, we now expect to be in the upper half of our initial 2021 guidance ranges for revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow, and have adjusted these ranges accordingly. During the quarter, we were pleased to complete a debt financing that provides us with significantly more financial flexibility a much improved maturity profile, and lower cash debt service requirements than the previous arrangement. We believe this new structure together with a new credit facility that we announced yesterday will be beneficial in growing our business. This morning, I'll briefly review our progress this quarter in winning awards and advancing our projects. I'll also update you on our bid pipeline and our ESG initiatives. Roger will then review our financial performance during the quarter and year to date, provide additional detail on recent financing initiatives, and address our revised 2021 guidance. Beginning with new awards, through early November, we have received $805 million of new business awards, which exceeds the record level of $715 million for all of 2020. The total this year to date includes approximately $120 million of new awards received since our second quarter earnings call in August. These recent awards included three remediation projects for a longstanding Southeastern Utility customer and byproduct sales and marketing contracts with two Midwestern power companies, one of which is a new customer for Shara. Our ability to continue to add new customers and new awards with our power generation partners speaks to the essential nature of our services and the reputation, experience, and resiliency of our industry-leading team. Notwithstanding the excellent results already this year, we see a strong potential to exceed the $805 million by year-end. We still have more than $2.6 billion of pending proposals with some expected to be decided in the fourth quarter, though most will not be awarded until 2022. We have also identified nearly $7 billion of opportunities across our businesses. We are optimistic about the prospects for converting some of these opportunities into additional new business that will further add to the predictability of our revenue stream and layer on growth well into the future. Based on market data, as well as our discussions with existing and potential customers, we expect that 2022 will be a robust year for bid activity. with more solicitations expected as well as larger project sizes than we bid on this year. As the partner of choice for solving our customers' most complex environmental challenges and as an industry leader in quality, safety, and compliance, we are ideally situated to help utilities and power generation companies deliver on their impoundment closure requirements and needs. The regulatory environment continues to be favorable for our business. As we have discussed on previous calls, there continues to be significant activity at a number of states as they move toward a more prescriptive approach to the means and methods of ash pond remediation. At the federal level, we believe that the Environmental Protection Agency, under the Biden administration, will accelerate its efforts on regulatory requirements, beneficiation guidelines, and ash impoundment closure deadlines, which could result in additional market opportunities for SHARA. For example, the EPA expected to publish sometime this month a proposed rule addressing facilities that were closed prior to October 2015, which are viewed as still presenting a recognized environmental concern. This could include impoundments or landfills where coal combustion residuals are interacting with the environment or where there is wastewater generation that is impacting the environment. Following a public comment period, this rule for legacy facilities could become effective in late 2022. We also see potential additional market opportunities for our byproduct sales business. Where recently enacted infrastructure legislation could increase the demand for concrete. This legislation provides for an investment of $1.2 trillion over a multi-year period in the infrastructure and transportation systems. including bridges and roads, airports, rail transit, ports, and electric vehicle charging stations, as well as broadband, water, and energy systems. As you know, YS serves as a highly attractive economic and environmental alternative to Portland cement in the production of ready-mix concrete and concrete products. Turning to an update on our businesses, our ERT services business continues to be a compelling alternative one-stop solution for our customers looking to address the environmental and economic challenges associated with retiring older or less economically viable fossil generation assets. At our Gibbons Creek project in Texas, we achieved a major milestone by completing a planned implosion and demolition of the plant in October. Remediation efforts at the project continue to progress on plan and below budget. We expect remediation of the ash and scour ponds to be substantially completed by year end, with work on remediating the landfill still ahead as planned. With demolition complete, we expect scrap sales to accelerate in the fourth quarter and continue into the year ahead. We are also nearing completion of parcel redevelopment and expect parcel sale activity to pick up in early 2022. We are looking forward to our acquisition of the Avon Lake plant in Ohio, when the plant ceases operation in April of next year. We will assume responsibility for demolition of plant and environmental remediation and sustainable redevelopment of the site, as we are doing at Gibbons Creek. We are excited about the opportunity to support the citizens and government of the City of Avon Lake to repurpose this property for public use and enjoyment. We are very pleased with our performance at our ongoing ERT projects And we continue to believe that SHARA possesses unique competitive advantages and benefits for our utility customers compared with other alternatives. ERT represents an area for significant growth and profitability, and we continue to devote resources to expand these opportunities. In our remediation and compliance business, work is progressing on schedule and on budget on several large projects in the southeast. including a coal ash reclamation project for Dominion Energy and two long-term ash pond closure by removal projects for another southeastern utility. The first phase of the Dominion project is expected to be substantially completed by year end with an expected ramp of second phase beginning in 2022. We also began work on three new ash pond remediation contracts that were awarded recently by the previously mentioned southeastern utility customer. Next, I'd like to touch on our ESG initiatives. As we have indicated previously, sustainability is at the heart of our business. We practice resource conservation and recovery through the beneficial recycling of coal ash, ash impoundment closure services, and the remediation and redevelopment of land for community and commercial use. These activities reduce greenhouse gas emissions, decrease landfill disposal, conserve national resources, and protect our waterways. In our inaugural ESG report issued earlier this year, we laid out 2021 objectives in several key areas. We are on track or ahead of plan with respect to these goals. To cite a few examples, in the area of safety, we have maintained our excellent safety record with zero lost time injuries this year to date and a total recordable incident rate of 0.22, which is below our goal of 0.46 or lower. We are pleased and our safety performance was recognized this year with several awards for construction safety and employee safety. In terms of environmental, we have increased both the number and quality of site audits and inspections, with site team environmental compliance inspections nearly doubling since 2020. Year-to-date, we have not received any notices of violation or notices of deficiency. We are also on track to remediate or redevelop sustainably 90% of land owned, such as at the Brickhaven, BCCOP, and Gibbons Creek sites. I would also note that our new credit facility with JPMorgan Chase Bank is a sustainability-linked loan with potential for pricing and fee reductions tied to the achievement of our ESG goals on a one- in five-year basis. Before turning the call over to Roger, I'd like to thank our dedicated Shara Solutions employees who are working every day to help our customers ensure service reliability and to address their environmental and recycling needs. We remain committed to keeping our people safe, supporting our customers, and growing our business. With that, I'll turn it over to Roger Shannon, our CFO.