CVR Energy Inc.

At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Richard Roberts, Vice President of FP&A and Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, Christine. Good afternoon, everyone. We very much appreciate you joining us this afternoon for our CBR Energy First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. With me today are Dave Lamp, our Chief Executive Officer, Dane Newman, our Chief Financial Officer, and other members of management. Prior to discussing our 2024 First Quarter results, let me remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements, as that term is defined under federal securities laws. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are cautioned that these statements may be affected by important factors set forth in our filing for the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our latest earnings release. As a result, actual operations or results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except to the extent required by law. This call also includes various non-GAAP financial measures. The disclosures related to such non-GAAP measures, including reconciliation as the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, are included in our 2024 first quarter earnings release that we filed with the SEC in the form 10-Q for the period and will be discussed during the call. With that said, I'll turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Richard. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. Before I discuss our results for the quarter, I want to address an incident at the Woody Wood Refinery that occurred over the weekend early Sunday morning during severe weather in the area. The Winnie Wood Refinery experienced a fire that was extinguished later that morning. No employees or contractors were injured and we are in the beginning of the process of restarting portions of the refinery. We are still assessing the extent of the damage and we expect to provide additional details when they are available. Turning to our results, yesterday we reported a first quarter Consolidated net income of $90 million and earnings per share of 81 cents. EBITDA was $203 million. Our solid results for the quarter were driven by continued declines in the prices of RINs and increased crude oil and refined product prices in the quarter, offset by lower crack spreads and fertilizer prices relative to a prior period. We are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors authorized a first quarter regular dividend of 50 cents per share, which will be paid on May 20th to shareholders of record at the close of the market on May 13th. Our annualized dividend yield of approximately 6% yesterday, based on yesterday's closing price, remains best in class among the independent refiners. In our petroleum segment, Combined total throughput for the first quarter of 2024 was approximately 196,000 barrels per day, and late product yield was 101% on crude oil processed. During the quarter, we completed the planned turnaround at the Winningwood Refinery. We currently do not have any additional turnarounds planned until Coffeeville's turnaround on a crude unit catcracker and Alki, and other associated units currently scheduled for the spring of 2025. Benchmark cracks softened during the first quarter, with Group 3-211 averaging $19.55 per barrel compared to $23.66 per barrel for the fourth quarter of 23. First quarter average RIN prices declined from fourth quarter and ended the quarter at approximately 68 cents on an RVO-weighted basis. While we're thrilled with the Fifth Circuit's decision in November vacating EPA's denial of Winnie Wood's small refinery exemption petitions for 2017 through 2021 and reprimanded those petitions back to EPA, EPA's egregious conduct continues. They still have not acted on Winnie Wood's small refinery exemption petitions for 2017 through 2021, though 90 days have passed since the issuance of the Fifth Circuit mandate. Nor has EPA ruled on EPA's small refinery exemption petition for 2023 due last month. We will continue to push for a court ruling to force EPA to do its job and follow the law. The D.C. Court of Appeals heard oil arguments in the small refinery exemption denial cases for a few other small refineries a few weeks ago. While we expect the ruling will take some time, we were pleased with how the hearing went. We also continue to wait for a response from the EPA regarding our petition for rulemaking related to the RFS. We believe the law is clear that only obligated parties who over-comply with their RFS obligations can generate excess RINs, and that they may sell those RINs only to other obligated parties who need the RINs for compliance. That EPA allows non-obligated parties to exploit the RIN market for profit is just wrong. is not just wrong, it violates the law as written. If EPA does not respond to our petition, once again, we will see them in court. For the first quarter of 2024, we processed approximately 7 million gallons of vegetable oil feedstocks at our Winniewood Renewable Diesel Unit, with throughput in the quarter impacted by a planned catalyst change. The hobo spread improved from the fourth quarter of 23, Lower soybean oil prices, although prices for D4 RENs remain depressed as a result of EPA's continued mismanagement of the RFS program. As a reminder, our renewable diesel business is currently reported in our corporate and other segment. In the fertilizer segment, we achieved consolidated ammonia plant utilization of 90%, which was also impacted by some planned downtime in the quarter at our Coffeyville facility. Nitrogen fertilizer prices in the first quarter of 2024 remained fairly steady for the fourth quarter of 2000, with fourth quarter 2023 pricing. And we saw strong demand for ammonia with favorable weather conditions during the quarter. Now let me turn the call over to Dane to discuss our financial highlights.