Ormat Technologies, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the ORMAT Technologies Q1 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal for a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that today's event is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Rob Fink. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Hosting the call today are Daron Blachar, Chief Executive Officer, Asi Ginzburg, Chief Financial Officer, and Smadar Lavi, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Before beginning, we would like to remind you that information provided during this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections, about future events that are forward-looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to the company's plans, objectives, and expectations for future operations and are based on management's current estimates and projections, future results, or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see risk factors as described in ORMET Technologies' annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q that are filed with the SEC. In addition, during the call, the company will present non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and management's reasons for presenting such information is set forth in the press release that was issued last night as well as in the slides that are posted on the company's website. Because these measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP, they should not be considered in isolation from the financial statements that are prepared in accordance with GAAP. Before I turn the call over to management, I would like to remind everyone that the slide presentation accompanying this call may be accessed on the company's website at ormat.com under the presentation link that's found on the investor relations tab. With all of that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to Daron Blachar. Daron, the call is yours.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As we indicated in our fourth quarter call a few weeks ago, we view 2021 as a build-up year in which we lay additional groundwork to accelerate the growth of our electricity and our rapidly growing energy storage segment. We made significant progress ramping the generation of the Puna plant in Hawaii. We started the operation of the Vallecito Energy Storage Facility in California, and we recently completed the construction of the McGinnis expansion in Nevada, which is now in late stage of startup. On the same time, we are making progress in our efforts to rebuild our backlog, which is still facing the burden of the pandemic-related headwinds. These dynamics explain the low revenue and profitability reported in the fourth quarter compared to last year, with $9.9 million reduction in the product segment gross profit as the main vital. However, the strength and growth of the electricity and storage segment, which are on track to meet our growth plans, partially compensated that significant reduction. With the ample liquidity combined with the growing pipeline of storage and electricity opportunities, and tailwind from government support in renewable energy, we are confident that we can achieve our stated goals of increasing our generating portfolio by 50% to approximately 1.5 gigawatts by 2023, with a significant contribution coming from our energy storage business. I will now turn the call over to Asi to review the financial results before I provide further updates on our operations and future plans. Asi?