World Kinect Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the World Connect Corporation second quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Elsa Ballard, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to WorldConnect's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call, which will be presented alongside our live slides presentation. Today's presentation is also available via webcast on our Investor Relations website. I'm Elsa Ballard, the new VP of Investor Relations here on the call for today, the first time. I am thrilled to be here. With me on the call today is Michael Kasper, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Ira Burns, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to review our safe harbor statement. Certain statements made today, including comments about our expectations regarding future plans and performance, are forward-looking statements that are subject to a range of uncertainties and risk that could cause actual results to materially differ. Factors that could cause results to materially differ could be found in our most recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the SEC. WorldConnect 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. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is included in our press release and can be found on our website. We'll begin with a few minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a Q&A period. At this time, I'd like to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Kaspar.

Thanks, Elsa. Welcome to you, Elsa, and welcome to all. This is Elsa's first call, and you may notice some new elements going forward and more communications in a variety of mediums as a commitment of World Connect. I would like to thank Glenn Clevitz for his work over the years on investor relations, and now he has the opportunity to focus on our important global treasury requirements. Thank you, Glenn, for all of your work over the years. It's been an exciting few months for us here at WorldConnect, importantly that I can now officially call the company WorldConnect. I want to begin my remarks with why the name WorldConnect and what that means for the company and for you as investors. For nearly 40 years, we have been providing energy, logistics, and finance solutions, creating value for both suppliers and consumers of energy. When we went public on the New York Stock Exchange over 30 years ago, we were a small reseller of petroleum products, primarily in the US. When we rang the New York Stock Exchange closing bell last month at our official rebrand, it was as number 70 on the Fortune 100. with nearly $60 billion in sales last year and maintaining and growing an energy ecosystem of thousands of customers, suppliers, partners, and experts around the world fulfilling energy in 200 countries and territories. Our mission was then, and still is today, to meet our customers' energy needs in the most efficient manner possible and to provide our supply partners with a world-class distribution platform. While we are not in the business of producing or refining the energy we supply, we work every day to improve access and deliver value to our global network of customers, suppliers, and partners. The changing of our corporate name to WorldConnect is part of our ongoing commitment to that mission and more clearly reflects our future facing businesses that anticipate and adapt to our customers and the market's evolving requirements. One of the ongoing challenges our customers face today is the need to source and consume a diverse energy diet that is affordable, reliable, and increasingly lower carbon to achieve their sustainability targets or satisfy regulatory requirements. At World Connect, we are not only serving our customers' conventional energy needs today, but also expanding our portfolio to provide customers with greater access to sustainably sourced energy across aviation, land, and marine. As an update on the renewable energy front, during the second quarter, we announced an expansion of our partnerships with two of the largest sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, providers, expanding our ability to supply SAF to over 40 airports in North America and Europe. Additionally, we also made a minority investment through WorldConnect Sustainability Ventures in a commercial mobile EV charging company, providing charging as a service to fleets and other consumers. These are all excellent examples of WorldConnect's strategic evolution as we seek to leverage our extensive supply network to bring value to our partners and customers alike. So while we are very focused on supporting our customers' energy transition journeys, we recognize this part of our business today remains small relative to our conventional energy business. However, this business has been gaining traction, growing year over year, and creating synergies with our conventional fuel offerings. Our commitment to growing sustainably related products and services is evidenced first by our continued investment in people supporting these activities with headcount of 250 across the globe. We are also working to drive organic growth in related areas, including digital and technology-enabled data management for what is a relatively complex, specialized, and evolving space. Second, we have a dedicated team focused on a growing pipeline of inorganic investment opportunities. Importantly, we aren't looking to make investments for the sake of making investments, but rather carefully identifying innovative future solutions that will strategically enhance our customer offerings and satisfy their requirements for today and tomorrow, while driving incremental and long-term shareholder value. Furthermore, we are also selectively investing in certain early-stage ventures that show promise of delivering innovative future solutions as the market continues to evolve. One such investment is Producers Trust, a digital platform supporting regenerative agriculture for small and medium-sized farmers in developing countries. This investment brings us closer to nature-based solutions and is a reflection of our commitment to bringing high-quality, high-impact carbon offsets to market. We will also continue to roll out technology-enabled solutions to drive value and operational integration with the marketplace, automate as many of our internal processes as makes economic sense, and continue to logically deploy AI on use cases with the best business and organizational outcomes. We are on course to be a cloud-first company by year end. meaning all of our systems and infrastructure will be in the cloud, giving us greater security, resilience, and the flexibility to expand and scale our global offerings. Finally, in the same way that we built the world's first and largest independent marine fuel services business and the most diversified independent aviation supply and services business, we will build our land and renewable energy supply and carbon management businesses. While aviation and marine took longer to build, We expect these two will take considerably less time because we already have the global footprint to leverage together with knowledgeable and experienced professionals executing with better tools. The foundational principles of return on capital cashflow and risk management upon which world fuel services built our base businesses will continue to govern our evolution as world connect. We are laser focused on driving efficiency and returns within our global platform and improving the consistency of profit contribution from all of these activities. And so, in summary, we believe our recent name change to World Connect is very meaningful. While we will continue to meet the critical fueling requirements of our customers day in and day out, this change is intended to emphasize our ongoing transformation alongside that of our customers and suppliers, further solidifying our existing relationships and trust we have built in the past with enhanced and expanded relationships in the future. Therefore, World Connect more clearly reflects our future facing business as we continue anticipating and adapting to the evolving needs and capabilities of our partners in the markets we serve throughout the world. It's certainly exciting times for us. As I turn the call over to Ira for a review of our financial results and business results, I want to conclude with a thank you to the over 5,000 members of our global team who work every day to ensure the success of our company. It is only because of their hard work, your hard work, that we will continue to drive our long-term growth strategy and deliver on our mission. It is truly a pleasure and privilege to work with such a talented, dedicated and passionate group of people who make coming to the office every day an engaging and meaningful experience. Thanks very much, Ira. Let's hear all the good stuff.