REX American Resources Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the REX American Resources Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Doug Bruggemann, Chief Financial Officer of REX American. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining RECS American Resources Q3 2024 conference call. With me on our call today are Stuart Rose, RECS Executive Chairman, and Zafar Rizvi, the RECS CEO. We'll get to our presentation and comments momentarily, as well as your questions, but first I will review the Safe Harbor Disclosure. In addition to historical facts or statements of current conditions, today's conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements reflect the company's current expectations and beliefs, but are not guarantees of future performance. As such, actual results may vary materially from expectations. The risk and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements are described in today's news announcement and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. Rex American Resources assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I'd now like to turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Stuart Rose.

Good morning, and thank you again to everyone for joining us. During the third quarter, Rex American Resources continued our progress on our three goals for 2024, setting the company up for success well into the future. As a reminder, these goals were to continue profitable operations, to complete the construction phase of our one earth energy carbon capture compression facility, and to complete the capacity expansion of our One Earth Energy ethanol production facility to 175 million gallons per year and moved toward the plan further permitting of the facility to 200 million gallons per year. To the first goal, we exceeded the mark. The third quarter was Rex American Resources' second most profitable quarter in the company's history, behind only the third quarter of 2023. Our net income per share of $1.38 was an improvement of 97% over the second quarter of 2024, principally reflecting better corn pricing. Gross margin improved over the third quarter of 2023 by 1%, despite a 21% reduction in product revenue. As we have consistently said, we believe Rex's facilities and personnel are among the best in the industry, which they prove quarter after quarter through their attention to detail and awareness of the markets. The focus on lean and efficient operations in our core ethanol business we believe will serve as a basis for future increases in profit levels once our One Earth Plan expansion is up and running next year. It is this part of the business that has allowed RECS to grow substantially debt-free, maintain strategic freedom, and move forward independently with additive growth projects. As we always do, I want to say thank you to our team for the efforts this quarter and every day. And the second goal, to complete construction of the capture and compression portion of our One Earth Energy CCS project in Gibson City, Illinois. We have substantially realized this goal. I'll let Zafar Rizvi, our CEO, discuss the specifics with regard to the remainder of this project later in the call. Our third goal was to complete construction of the One Earth Ethanol production capacity expansion to 175 million gallons per year to prepare for further permitting and production levels of 200 million gallons per year. Right now, we estimate that the facility is on track for completion in the middle of 2025 based upon delays in delivery timelines for certain necessary components. As you can see, our efforts to support near and long-term growth moving forward successfully. The current time, the fourth quarter, continues to be profitable, betrayals last year's fourth quarter, which was a historically very strong quarter. I'd now like to turn things over to our CEO, Zafar Rizvi, to give further updates on our major projects.