Enviva Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Enviva Inc's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kate Walsh, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to NViva's first quarter of 2023 earnings conference call. We appreciate your interest in and support of NViva, and thank you for your participation today. On this morning's call, we have John Kepler, Executive Chairman of the Board, Thomas Mess, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Shai Evan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda will be for John, Thomas, and Shai to discuss our financial and operating results and to provide an update on our current business outlook and operations. Then we will open up the call for questions. During the course of our remarks and the subsequent Q&A session, we will be making forward-looking statements which are subject to a variety of risks. Information concerning the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements can be found in our earnings release as well as in our other SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. In addition to presenting our financial results in accordance with GAAP, we will also be discussing adjusted EBITDA and certain other non-GAAP financial measures pertaining to completed reporting periods as well as our forecasts. Information concerning the reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measure and other relevant disclosures is included in our earnings release. Our SEC reports, earnings release, and most recent investor presentation, which contain reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures we use, can be found on our website at invivabiomass.com. I would now like to turn the call over to John.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. It's clear from our earnings release and 10Q filed yesterday that the cost and productivity challenges of the first quarter that the team outlined a month ago are deeper and more significant than understood at the time, and that the positive effects of the improvement initiatives are taking longer than expected, with the benefits expected to be realized still ahead. The poor operating performance at the end of last year, combined with limited progress in a very disappointing first quarter, is a reality that the team has internalized. And as a result, the company is resetting guidance this morning. Thomas will walk through that guide, given our revised expectations about what the company can accomplish in the near term, as well as highlight some important changes he has made to the operations leadership in the company to get the team better aligned on how to reliably deliver the productivity and cost position we have demonstrated possible. With that reset and the quarterly guidance provided, you can expect the team to report on our progress clearly and consistently throughout the year, describing where we have engineered improvement and where we have more work to do. Also as part of this reset, our board of directors, in consultation with management, undertook a process to reconsider InViva's capital allocation policy. After a careful review of potential alternative uses of cash flow, The Board has decided to revise NVIVA's capital allocation framework by eliminating the company's quarterly dividend in order to prioritize maintaining strong liquidity and a conservative leverage profile, maintaining our investment plans to increase the efficiency and cost position of our existing plants, generating internal funding and timing flexibility for our current investment plans in new, fully-tracted plant and port assets, and authorizing an opportunistic share repurchase program. This shift in capital allocation also gives us flexibility to potentially accelerate organic and inorganic growth in the future with less reliance on accessing the capital markets. We firmly believe this revision to our capital allocation framework is the best way to create durable value for all of NViva shareholders. These changes reposition NViva from a yield and growth company to a pure play growth company. something I think the market has been telling us for some time. And given the robust opportunity set in front of us, we are improving our ability to take full advantage of the highly visible long-term growth ahead. As many of you know, I stepped down from InViva last year to deal with some difficult medical issues. I'm very fortunate to have those largely behind me now, but I'm also privileged to have the opportunity to be back at InViva. in a different role than before, but no less committed to the company's success. And like the other members of the board, no less convinced in our ability to return to the high levels of financial performance you have seen from us historically. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Thomas.