Excelerate Energy, Inc.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Accelerate Energy first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Sam, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand you over to your host, Craig Hicks, Vice President of Investor Relations at ESG, to begin. So, Craig, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Accelerate Energy's first quarter 2024 earnings call. Participating on the call today are Stephen Cobos, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dana Armstrong, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Also joining the call today is Oliver Simpson, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. Our first quarter 2024 earnings results press release and presentation were released yesterday afternoon and can be found on our website at ir.accelerateenergy.com. I would like to remind everyone that we will be making forward-looking statements on this call that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, and we make no obligation to update or revise them. Today's remarks will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. We provide a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures at the back of the presentation. With that, it is my pleasure to pass the call over to Stephen Kobos.

Thanks, Craig. Good morning, everyone. I would like to start with saying we delivered strong financial results for the first quarter. Xcelerate Energy's financial performance reflects the robust earnings power of our core regasification business. It also highlights our commitment to operating our FSRE fleet at the highest levels of reliability and to delivering natural gas safely to our customers. As a global energy company, we take great pride in using our FSRU fleet to deliver integrated LNG solutions to customers who need them most. In addition to operating our core regas business, we are focused on expanding our presence in new and existing markets across our global footprint. On today's call, I'm going to share with you some additional insights into our business development strategy to help provide a better understanding of where the opportunities are and when we expect to start deploying capital. I'll then hand the call over to Dana, who will walk through our financial results for the quarter. Since we were last together, the Accelerate team has made great progress toward our plan to grow our company and maximize value for our shareholders. To recap our strategy, we are optimizing our core regas business and are executing our comprehensive organic and inorganic growth roadmap with three key areas for value creation. First, acquiring ownership interests in LNG regasification terminals. Second, establishing a diversified LNG portfolio. And third, investing in downstream natural gas infrastructure. While many companies in our industry aspire to expand their presence in markets around the world, Accelerate already has an extensive global presence. Accelerate operates approximately 20% of the global FSRU fleet. We have regional offices in 11 countries and an operational presence in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Pakistan, the UAE, and the United States. Let's be clear. This is a competitive advantage for our company. We are using our expansive reach to pursue growth opportunities in both new and existing markets. This means leveraging our relationships with sovereigns. It means leveraging our reputation as the world's leading provider of FSRUs. How? By having meaningful and constructive conversations for new regassed infrastructure and long-term LNG supply. All our business development efforts are aligned with strategic areas of focus along the LNG value chain. We are optimistic that these discussions will lead to strategic investments that will enhance our long-term contract revenue and margins, create pull-through demand for future vessel deployments, and capture incremental LNG and gas sales opportunities. As part of our effort to calibrate our grant strategy, we have identified and evaluated in detail a number of organic and inorganic opportunities and have prioritized the most promising ones. Though we have identified opportunities across our asset footprint, the majority of the opportunities we're exploring are focused in Asia Pacific and the Americas. Our commercial teams are now in advanced discussions with several potential partners worldwide who satisfy Accelerate's requirements for value creation and for compliance. We continue pursue opportunities to develop LNG redas terminals. We do this with a focus on priority projects in countries with growing economies and an increasing demand for LNG. These are markets like India, markets like Vietnam, markets like Brazil. As it relates to capital investment, 10 of the projects range between $50 and $400 million. Two of the 12 projects have capex greater than this range, one of which is pyrite. I cannot emphasize enough that the entire Accelerate management team understands the importance of being good stewards of our shareholders' capital. We will continue to take a disciplined approach as we evaluate these investments and are committed to closing deals that meet or exceed our return hurdles. We are confident and we look forward to making subsequent announcements regarding several of these opportunities in the coming weeks and months. To recap what you've heard today, Accelerate Energy is a compelling growth story. We are investing strategically in our FSRU internal assets to enhance our earnings and to provide us with a solid foundation for substantial growth. As a leader in the LNG space, We are essential both to ensuring energy security and accelerating the energy transition. We are leveraging our share of the global FSRU fleet and our presence around the world to pursue growth opportunities in new and existing markets. And we are in advanced talks with several counterparties for investments along the value chain as we focus on maximizing capital allocation strategy. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dana.