NACCO Industries, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NACTO industry's second quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Christina Kometko. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2021 Second Quarter Earnings Call. Thank you for joining us this morning. I am Christina Kometko, and I am responsible for Investor Relations at Niaco Industries. Joining me today are J.C. Butler, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Elizabeth Lovman, Vice President and Controller. Yesterday, we published our second quarter 2021 results and filed our 10-Q. This information is available on our website. Today's call is also being webcast. The webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months. Our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements made here today. These risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings release issued last night and in our 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly earnings conference call is at all. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP information that we believe is useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. Reconciliations for these non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and on our website. In a moment, I'll discuss our second quarter results, but first, let me turn the call over to our President and CEO, J.C. Butler, for some opening remarks. J.C.

Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be on the call this morning since we have a lot of good news to report. 2021 continues to be a good year for us as our second quarter earnings release describe new developments that build on a lot of good news for our first quarter i'll start with some great news for our coal segment in late june great river energy entered into an agreement to sell coal creek station and the adjacent high voltage direct current transmission line once closing conditions are met and the sale of coal creek station is completed The existing agreements between GRE and our Falkirk mine will be terminated, and we will receive a $10 million termination payment, as well as certain other assets that are described further in our release. Falkirk will continue to supply all of the coal requirements for Coal Creek Station under a management fee agreement with Coal Creek Station's expected new owner, Rainbow Energy. Similar to our existing management fee contract, the GRE will be responsible for funding all mine operating costs and securing all capital required to operate and reclaim the mine. This is very exciting news for everyone involved, and I think it really highlights the kinds of things we're trying to accomplish with our protect the core strategy. Turning to North American mining. Our team signed one new contract in the second quarter of 2021 to develop and operate a new aggregates operation in Indiana. This contract is with an existing customer who is a major U.S. producer of construction materials. The team further advanced our growth efforts in late July by signing two contracts with the leading supplier of construction materials in North America to perform all mining operations at two sand and gravel quarries located in Texas and Arkansas. These last two new contracts, which are expected to be accreted to earnings, expand the range of contract mining services beyond the traditional scope of North American mining's core limestone mining business to include responsibility for all mining activities at these quarries, but also further advance our expansion outside of Florida. As I've said before, there's a lot of growth potential in this business, and I note that North American mining's pipeline of potential new projects remains strong. Our team at Catapult Mineral Partners is actively overseeing the performance of our own loyalty and mineral interests and continues to look for opportunities for us to invest. The mitigation resources of North America team continues to advance development of their existing mitigation projects and is evaluating a number of interesting new projects as well. I'm very pleased with the way all of these businesses are advancing their strategies. I would be remiss, however, if I don't mention that we were notified in mid-June that the contract mining agreement between our Vistai Fuels Company and the Navajo Transitional Energy Company will be terminated as of September 30 of this year. NTTEC will assume control and responsibility for operation of the Navajo mine on termination of the contract mining agreement. NTTEC is responsible for all liabilities, including mine reclamation, and under the agreement is required to pay us a termination fee, which is anticipated to be approximately $10 million. We're very proud of what we've accomplished over the last few years at the Navajo Mine. We dramatically changed and improved the safety culture at the mine, and we advanced work on mine reclamation. We also got to know and work with a lot of great people at the mine and in the community. We wish NTTEC continued success as they take over mine operations. Finally, I want to talk about our new branding, which we announced last Friday. My letter in the annual report mentioned that we were working on a plan to better describe our company and what we do. The result of that work was announced last week when we launched a new brand identity for our family of companies, which we referred to as NACO Natural Resources. NACO Industries is still the name of the public company. We created NACO Natural Resources to be the unifying brand name for our portfolio of natural resources businesses. This new approach unifies our identity and underscores our commitment to all of our businesses while creating a new identity that will help us execute on our two key strategies, which are protect the core and grow and diversify. The introduction of NACO Natural Resources honors our strong legacy as a leading 108-year-old mining company and recognizes our success in growing strong and competitive new businesses that leverage our core skills. The NACO website contains overview information about NACO natural resources in each of our businesses, and it also provides investor information for NACO industries. We created new logos and websites for each of the operating businesses so that each business now has its own unique identity that can easily be linked back to our umbrella brand. After the call, please take some time to explore the websites and be sure to watch our branding launch video that is on the homepage of NACO.com. I am very optimistic about our future because I have a lot of confidence in our strategies to protect the core and to grow and diversify. I believe that we have strong businesses with strong teams executing on sound business strategies, and I'm enthusiastic about how we can continue to advance the ball with our new tagline of bringing natural resources to life. With that, I turn the call back over to Christy to cover our results for the quarter in more detail. Christy?