Genie Energy Ltd.

Good morning and welcome to Genie Energy's fourth quarter and year-end 2023 earnings call. Until the Q&A portion of the 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 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, Operator. With me today are Michael Stein, Genie Energy's CEO, and Avi Golden, Genie Energy's TFO, who will discuss operational and financial results. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the reports that we file periodically with the SEC. Jeannie assumes no obligation to 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 we forecast. During their remarks, management makes 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, which is posted on the Jeannie.com IR page, includes a reconciliation of consolidated adjusted EBITDA to its nearest comparable gap measures, consolidated debt 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. I will now turn the conference over to Michael Stein, GENIE's Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Brian. Welcome to GENIE Energy's fourth quarter earnings call. I'm happy that we achieved record revenue for the fourth quarter and full year 2023 while exceeding our adjusted EBITDA guidance with $57 million for the full year. This achievement was the result of the extraordinary efforts of our team and several strategic moves we made over the course of 2022 and 2023 that took advantage of the volatility in global energy markets. We are extremely pleased with the performance of the company as we accomplished our 2023 goal of materially growing the size of our customer book while establishing a new baseline of financial performance. At GRE, we ended the year with 361,000 customers and 350,000 RCEs, representing increases of 31% and 34%, respectively, over the prior year end. Our success in aggressively growing our customer base in the early part of the year drove record levels of annual consumption, enabling record revenues. Sequentially, our customer accounts decreased somewhat, reflecting the expiration of a customer aggregation deal in Massachusetts. At Grew, we closed on the acquisition of a 9.4 megawatt operating portfolio during the quarter, our first acquisition of its kind. The IRR in this transaction was especially attractive for an operating portfolio, and we felt it moved our strategy forward. Note that as we grow out this business, we intend to be opportunistic about potential acquisitions at all stages of the development cycle, including operating assets. With regards to our development pipeline, we advanced on our projects in development and sought the addition of new projects while others dropped out due to lack of viability. This is not uncommon given that many pipeline projects are early stage opportunities where we are still in the process of acquiring site rights. However, we recently invested in our team and capabilities here and believe this will help us to build a larger solar pipeline and bring more projects to completion. As a reminder, our solar project development strategy is intended to be a long-term value driver for the company. Developing projects from site rights acquisition through construction and into operations can in some cases take years. However, we are focused on the identification and development of projects with robust return potential that we expect will provide growing recurring revenue streams to the company for many years to come. Building off our strong performance in 2023, we are targeting $40 to $50 million in company-wide consolidated adjusted EBITDA for 2024. This represents a significant increase from our pre-2022 normalized adjusted EBITDA range of $25 to $30 million, even after allowing for our planned investment in GRU. Our higher expectations reflect our expanded customer base at GRE, our pivot to operating exclusively in domestic retail markets, and our focus on continuously enhancing our analytical and operation capabilities. Our 2024 projections also include continued investment in new retail customer acquisition. While wholesale energy costs remain at lower levels, we will continue to pursue acquisition opportunities created by the higher legacy cost-based rates of certain incumbent utilities. This organic targeted growth strategy should enable us to expand our meter-based cost effectively, albeit likely at a lower growth rate than we saw in 2023. This year at GRU, we will continue to move forward in completion of our Perry, New York and Lansing, New York solar farms. Additionally, we expect our upgraded project development team to continue to expand our pipeline and move existing projects ahead expeditiously. Our diversity business continues to grow at accelerated levels and provides recurring revenues. We expect that diversity and our other third-party services businesses can modestly enhance our growth and profitability in the years to come. To wrap up, we delivered another year of strong operational and financial results while continuing to position ourselves to create incremental medium to long-term value with our solar pipeline. Now, I'll turn the call over to Avi for his discussion of our financial results.