World Fuel Services Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the World Fuel Service's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Jerome and I'll be coordinating the call this evening. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Instructions on how to ask a question will be given at the beginning of the Q&A session. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Glenn Klevitz, World Fuels Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Mr. Klevitz, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Jerome. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the World Fuel Service's first quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Glenn Clevitz, and I'll be doing the introductions on this evening's call alongside our live slide presentation. This call is also available via webcast. To access this webcast or feature webcasts, please visit the World Fuel Services website and click on the webcast icon. With us on the call today are Michael Kasbar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Ira Burns, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have all received a copy of our earnings release. If not, you can access the release on our website. Before we get started, I would like to review WorldFuel's Safe Harbor Statement. Certain statements made today, including comments about WorldFuel's expectations regarding future plans and performance, are forward-looking statements that are subject to a range of uncertainties and risks that could cause WorldFuel's actual results to materially differ from the forward-looking information. A description of the risk factors that could cause results to materially differ from these projections can be found in WorldFuel's most recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WorldFuel assumes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these folk-looking statements in light of new information or future events. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included in WealthFuel's press release and can be found on its website. We'll begin with several minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a question and answer period. As with the prior conference call, we ask that members of the media and individual private investors on the line participate in listen-only mode. At this time, I would like to introduce our chairman and chief executive officer, Michael Kesler.

Thank you, Glenn, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this evening. I want to start by recognizing our global team for their tremendous individual and team effort and execution during these turbulent times. First it was COVID, then supply chain disruptions, and now coupled with historic price-fueled fuel price volatility arising from geopolitical events. During all of it, you have continued to deliver on our commitments to our customers and suppliers each and every day with extraordinary skill and expertise, remaining calm in the face of what was, in essence, a perfect storm of logistical complexity and difficulties and market dynamics. A big thank you to all of you. I've always said that our company's diversified business model is uniquely positioned to deliver during times of uncertainty in the markets we serve, and that when taken together, complement each other during times of heightened volatility. This quarter's solid overall result is a perfect example of that. In our aviation segment, our commercial passenger, business aviation, and cargo volumes were all up year over year with commercial passenger volume approaching 80% of 2019 pre-pandemic levels globally. Our aviation service and technology offerings also delivered strong year-over-year growth. While our core aviation business performed very well, aviation results were negatively impacted by a historic backward-dated fuel price environment, which Ira will explain in greater detail shortly. At the same time, our marine business performed extremely well, navigating a sharply rising bumper fuel price environment where average bumper prices increased 30% sequentially. Unlike our aviation business, most of our marine transactions are executed on a spot basis, and we earn higher returns on the back of higher prices, resulting in extraordinary performance when compared to recent periods. As credit capacity invariably tightens in high-price markets, the scale of our business and the strength of our balance sheet differentiates us in a volatile pricing environment where we can continue to provide our customers with the products, services, and credit they require when they need it most. And simply put, this served us well in the first quarter. With the backdrop of high container and dry bulk rates, strong commodity demand, capacity constraints, rising interest rates, supply chain inefficiencies, and sustainability, we had expanding opportunities to play an important role in the success of our marine customers. And lastly, our land business performed well in the first quarter. We experienced seasonably strong results in our UK heating oil business and solid contributions from our natural gas and power activities, which served to further augment the immediate benefits from the addition of the Flyers Energy operations to our overall land business. With Flyers Energy, we are better positioned to build a more rateable and leverageable national platform with a myriad of growth opportunities ahead. And now I will turn the call over to Ira for his review of our financial results.