World Fuel Services Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the World Fuel Service's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Gigi, 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Glenn Clevitz, World Fuels Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. Mr. Clevitz, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Gigi. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the World Fuels Service's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call, which will be presented alongside our live slide presentations. Today's presentation is also available via webcast. To access this webcast or future webcasts, please visit the World Fuel Services Corporation 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 forward-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 WorldFuel'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 prior conference calls, 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 Kaspar.

Thank you, Glenn. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. The first quarter of 2023 saw a continuation of the many trends that made last year a successful one for our business. Our aviation business benefited from increased international airline passenger demand as many parts of the world were still experiencing pandemic-related travel restrictions, which did not fully ease until the latter part of the year. Aviation has also benefited from the inventory risk mitigation efforts we implemented in response to the extreme price volatility experienced in 2022, which negatively impacted our aviation results through the first half of last year. We experienced continued growth of our diversified business and general aviation offerings, including products and services ancillary to our core fuel supply, such as trip support services and de-icing fluid, which also contributed meaningfully to the year-over-year increase in aviation profitability. Many of the services and digital offerings we provide to these customers form integral parts of a broader aviation ecosystem that connects us intimately with our customer base. This connectivity has proven to be more resilient to short-term economic weakness than traditional fuel sales, which is why our investment in an expansion of these lines of business over the past several years has been a primary strategic focus. Looking forward, this is a key underpinning of our digital growth strategy. We believe that by expanding our portfolio of digital offerings across all of our businesses, we can not only engage more deeply with our customers, but also improve the rateability of our revenue sources and reduce the capital intensity of our offerings to deliver enhanced returns. We are also focused on implementing advanced technologies to integrate our processes and make us easier to do business with. further enabling us to be the counterparty of choice in the markets we serve. On previous calls, I emphasized our efforts over the last several years to sharpen our portfolio and maximize returns, which resulted in the reorganization of our marine business. These actions have positioned our business to be able to weather the inevitable cyclicality of the global shipping industry through a lower cost structure that enables us to generate respectable financial returns in down markets while preserving the ability to provide value in volatile and credit-constrained markets, especially when demand strengthens. While the high fuel prices witnessed throughout much of 2022 began to ease in the first quarter of 2023, the marine businesses nevertheless benefited from the elevated interest rate environment and continued fuel price volatility, which, together with our prudent allocation of working capital, enabled marine to again deliver outstanding financial performance during the quarter. Both our aviation and marine businesses have benefited from our ability to leverage our strength and stability as a preferred and reliable counterparty to support our customers' fuel and financing requirements amidst an increasingly constrained and costly credit environment and a continued period of heightened supply and logistical uncertainty. While our land fuels business was liquid land fuel business, was impacted by extreme weather in North America, Our gas power and sustainability businesses performed well. Our liquid land and world connect sustainability businesses are following the common operating model we have in aviation and marine, and we are now enhancing our products and services, realigning teams, hiring top talent where needed, and leveraging our digital capabilities to build out a similar solutions ecosystem. I continue to be optimistic about our liquid land, gas, power, and sustainability businesses, becoming a larger and very complementary contributor to our overall business. In closing, while we continue to focus on driving growth and efficiencies in our conventional fuels business activities, which remain critical to our success for years to come, we recognize the evolving needs of our customers and the growing global demand for sustainable solutions. We therefore continue to focus on building our lower carbon fuel offerings as well as a growing suite of other sustainability-related products and services. We are continuing to build a business that not only thrives in the present, but also paves the way for an even brighter future. All of our successes to date are due to the collective efforts of every individual within our organization, and these are the same individuals who will lead us to a greener tomorrow in more ways than one. Thank you for your continued support. I'll now turn the call over to Ira for a review of our financial results.