Genie Energy Ltd.

Good morning and welcome to Genie Energy's second quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by a zero. After today's presentation by Genie Energy's management, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brian Siegel of Hayden IR.

Thank you. With me today are Michael Stein, Genie Energy's CEO, and Avi Golden, Genie Energy's CFO, who will discuss operational and financial results for the three-month period ended June 30th, 2022. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call, either in the prepared remarks or in the Q&A session, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which the company anticipates. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the specific risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports that we file periodically with the SEC. Genie assumes no obligation to either update any forward-looking statements that we have made or may make, or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast. During their remarks, management may make reference to adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure. Management believes that its measure of adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to both management and investors that supplement our core operating results. Our earnings release includes a reconciliation of consolidated adjusted EBITDA to its nearest comparable GAAP measures, consolidated net income and income from operations for all periods presented. In addition, adjusted EBITDA for applicable segments are reconciled in the earnings release to their respective segments' income from operations for all periods presented. Our earnings release is posted on our investor relations page at genie.com and has been filed on Form 8K with the SEC. I will now turn the conference over to Michael Stein, Genie's Chief Executive Officer. Michael?

Thank you, Brian. Welcome to Genie Energy's second quarter 2022 earnings call. Today, I will provide some color on our second quarter results and then discuss our strategy moving forward. After my remarks, Avi Golden, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide a deeper dive into our financial results. After Avi, we will be glad to take your questions. The second quarter is typically our lowest consumption period of the year due to seasonally lower energy consumption during the spring. Despite this, we recorded record profitability in both income from operations and adjusted EBITDA. easily the most profitable second quarter in our history. As I have mentioned in recent quarters, we adapted to the current period of high energy prices to optimize our portfolio of businesses while deliberately reducing our customer acquisition efforts to preserve margins. This strategy, combined with the work of our excellent risk management team, positioned us to generate the record profits we've delivered so far this year. Looking at our segments, Genie Retail Energy, or GRE, generated record Q2 gross profit of $29 million and adjusted EBITDA of nearly $15 million. This strong performance was driven by our careful forward commodity hedging and customer acquisition strategies, which positioned us well in this volatile market. Genie Retail Energy International, or GREI, also reported strong results. Similar to GRE, we significantly slowed marketing efforts and optimized our hedges moving into the winter seasons. GREI's results in this quarter were heavily impacted by the $35.8 million mark-to-market gain on our hedge position due to the extraordinary run-up in power markets in Europe. Genie Renewables' revenue grew from $2.3 million to $3.8 million sequentially. The revenue increase was generated primarily by our CityCom Solar subsidiary, which provides customer acquisition, billing, and management services for third-party community solar developers. We believe that our Citicom subsidiary and the other promising businesses within our renewable segment will continue to grow revenue in the second half of the year. Finally, we opportunistically repurchased 639,000 shares of common stock and redeemed $2 million in par value of preferred stock. This, combined with our regular 7.5-cent quarterly common dividend and the base dividend on the outstanding preferred stock totaled nearly $9 million in capital return to shareholders during the quarter. Now I'll provide a quick overview of our business and strategy moving forward. Genie Energy owns REPs and services a portfolio of retail customers in diverse, deregulated markets in the U.S. and internationally. We actively manage our REPs and customer bases both geographically and within geographies. In anticipation or response to evolving market conditions, we invest in customer acquisition and growth during some periods while during others, such as the most recent three quarters, when we have seen rapidly rising energy market pricing, we reduce our growth investment or take other steps to manage our obligations to customers to drive higher margins. Underlying our strategy is our risk mitigation team, which, among other things, hedges our forward obligations and, as I mentioned earlier, works to allow us to preserve margins during times of price volatility. In the U.S., our REPs, operate in 16 of 26 deregulated states, as well as Washington, D.C. GRE's asset-light model has proven to be remarkably flexible and resilient, generating positive cash flow across a wide range of challenging market conditions, including the current period of extraordinary energy price volatility. While our customer-based management strategy has led to throttle back our customer acquisition engine at present and even selectively trim our customer base, Our mid- to long-term strategy is to grow, but to do so opportunistically when market conditions warrant. Our customer expansion programs include increasing our market share in existing territories, expanding into new areas, and offering additional products and services to our installed base. Our Genie Renewable segment seeks to generate outsized returns from multiple high-growth potential opportunities related to solar energy generation. This segment consists of Genie Solar, which markets a full suite of solar procurement and installation services, Citicom Solar, which, as I mentioned earlier, provides customer acquisition, billing, and management services for third-party community solar developers, and Diversity, a full-service energy broker. In recent quarters, I've mentioned that our solar strategy includes creating value with robust returns by putting our strong balance sheet to work. I'm excited to say that over the past few weeks, we took a major step forward on this path with the formation of Sunlight Energy Investments, an investment vehicle structured to generate stable, predictable returns for participants through ownership of Genie Renewables' originated commercial, community, and utility-scale generation projects, and also projects developed by third parties. Genie will serve as Sunlight's general partner, but we expect to source most of the capital from outside investors who will participate in individual projects as limited partners. We believe that sunlight will provide attractive financial returns for Genie, and outsized investors will increase the win rate on new projects, creating significant value for Genie over the medium to long term. In our international business, as I mentioned earlier, the second quarter results benefited from very significant mark-to-market gains on our forward electricity hedges. Given the continued volatility and overall global economic and geopolitical risks, we are now taking steps to optimize this position and reduce our forward obligations in the market, starting with the sale of our Swedish book. We expect to be able to provide more details on this effort during our third quarter earnings call. Looking to the remainder of the year, at GRE, we currently expect adjusted EBITDA to remain strong and to exceed historical seasonal averages. We expect that Gini Renewables will contribute $15 to $20 million of revenue for the year and are looking forward to sharing more about our work in the solar development space over time. In summary, we had record bottom-line results during the first half of the year, and we expect to continue to generate strong year-over-year consolidated adjusted EBITDA expansion in the second half. We have also taken several steps to lay the foundation for long-term growth in our emerging renewable businesses. And finally, we continue to fulfill our commitment to return capital to shareholders. Now, over to Avi Golden for his discussion on our Q2 financial results.