Local Bounti Corporation

Good morning and welcome to Local Bounty's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today's events being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Jeff Sonick, Investor Relations at ICR. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and good morning. Today's presentation will be hosted by Local Bounties Chief Executive Officer Anna Fabrega and Chief Financial Officer Kathleen Balasek. The comments made during today's call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical facts are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Some of these risks and uncertainties are identified and discussed in the company's filings with the SEC. We'll also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures today. Please refer to the press release, which can be found on our investor relations website. investors.localbounty.com, for reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Anna. Go ahead.

Thank you, Jeff, and welcome to everyone on the call today. This is a pivotal time in Local Bounty's journey, and I'm thrilled to join you today for my first earnings call as the company's CEO. I'm proud to be part of this organization, and I'm excited to address the opportunities we have ahead of us. I believe that our stack and flow technology represents the most innovative and economically viable CEA approach for sustainable agriculture. I was attracted to Local Bounty because of its mission and the amazing people behind it. Agriculture has been a part of my entire life. In fact, my dad still runs a farm in Panama where he grows tea and coffee. I have a deep appreciation for the hard work and limitations that conventional farming methods require. which traditionally have limited producers to specific geographies and approaches. I believe food should be as local and sustainable as possible. Local Bounty represents a long overdue evolution and growing techniques that not only address environmental and sustainability goals by using a fraction of the water, land, and food miles traveled, but it is also a system to bring fresher, higher quality, and better tasting products closer to consumers across the country and eventually the world. I love that we are feeding families while helping the environment. I've been fortunate to be able to learn from highly regarded business leaders in organizations such as Amazon and apply those skills in young organizations that are in the midst of growing quickly and scaling up. I believe we are the future of food production. In order to be successful, we need to grow and scale the business in the most efficient way possible, optimizing our resources and leveraging our collective talent. I have deep knowledge of the retail sector and direct experience channeling efficient operational expansion, and I am excited to work with this talented team to do just that. We are still operating in a nascent industry ripe with innovation and fresh thinking. Although the challenges are real, the opportunity is immense. We are simultaneously ramping up our growing capacity at new and existing facilities, establishing consistent and replicable operational protocols, expanding our distribution network of approximately 13,000 doors, and enhancing penetration through a customer-focused, value-added program expansion. Individually, each of these represent an opportunity to materially advance our business. And collectively, our ability to accomplish these goals in a highly disciplined fashion represents a massive opportunity to generate significant economic value for our employees and shareholders alike. In order to achieve these goals, scaling the business, and delivering the financial returns we believe are inherent in our model, we need to adapt to ensure that we have the right infrastructure and people in place to position Local Bounty for success. As part of this process, we have optimized our organizational structure and added key talent in the areas of operations, sales, and human resources that will accelerate our strategy. I'm excited to be able to apply my experiences as CEO of Freshly and as a longtime executive at Amazon to drive significant company growth. The team has solidified an attractive model and continues to press forward, unlocking exciting advancements in yield to improve the potential of our unit economics. Equally important are the financing vehicles that we have in place today, enabling us to scale up in a capital efficient manner. We continue to have line of sight to break even adjusted EBITDA at the end of 2024 or early 2025, when we will be operating a broad footprint of facilities to serve as an ever-growing roster of blue-chip customers that spans the country. With the focus I am putting on our operation, I am confident that we have an organization that is up to the task of generating financial returns in the quickest and most efficient way possible, and I look forward to demonstrating our progress in the quarters and years to come. With that, I will now turn the call over to Kathy to provide an update on our facility build-out review our second quarter performance, and provide some comments on our expectations for the remainder of the year.