Darling Ingredients Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Darling Ingredients Incorporated conference call to discuss the company's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 results. After the speaker's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer period and instructions to ask a question will be given at that time. Today's call is being recorded. I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Sue Ann Guthrie. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you for joining the Darling Ingredients fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings call. Here with me today are Mr. Randall C. Stewie, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brad Phillips, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Bob Day, Chief Strategy Officer, and Mr. Matt Jansen, Chief Officer of North America. Our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings news release and slide presentation are available on the investor page under the Events and Presentations tab on our corporate website, and we'll be joined by a transcript of this call once it is available. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results can materially differ because of factors discussed in yesterday's press release and the comments made during this conference call, and in the risk factors section of our Form 10-K, 10-Q, and other reported filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement. Now I will hand the call over to Randy.

Hey, thanks, Sue Ann. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our fourth quarter and fiscal year 23 earnings call. In 2023, Darling Ingredients delivered its sixth consecutive record year in terms of combined adjusted EBITDA, at $1.61 billion. The vertical platform we have built demonstrated its ability to perform solidly despite significant volatility in the global food, feed, and fuel ingredient markets. Turning to the feed ingredient segment, despite lower prices for most finished goods, our global spread management process and increased volumes compared to 2022 helped offset the impact. Our laser focus on margin management and continued strategic review of our asset mix, both segment and geographic, ensured our margins remained in alignment with our expectations. In addition, during 2023, we made the decision to close two bakery plants, Muscatine, Iowa, and Bryan, Texas. Turning to our specialty food ingredients segment, raw material volumes increased about 11% year over year, primarily due to our Jonex acquisition and continued product mix shift. We continue to see strong performance and continued growth in China and North America consumer markets and remain very optimistic about our health and nutrition business line. Hydrolyzed collagen will continue to play a key role in our long-term growth strategy. Leveraging our extensive research and development in this area, we have successfully isolated individual peptides with targeted benefits related to various health concerns such as glucose moderation and memory retention. The potential applications are extensive, and we are excited to introduce some of these innovative products to the market later this year. Turning to our fuel segment, our European renewable energy segment continues to deliver very strong results. Lower diesel prices, RINs, and LCFS values, and a lower of cost or market inventory valuation impacted DGD margins for the quarter. However, DGD had an impressive year, with 1.25 billion gallons of renewable diesel sold at an EBITDA per gallon of 81 cents, which is still above our 12-year-old investment case of 79 cents EBITDA per gallon. With this, I'd like to turn the call over to Brad, take us through some financial comments, and then I'll come back with my thoughts on the rest of 24. Brad? Okay, thanks, Randy.