World Kinect Corporation

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to World Connect Corporation's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, press star 1-1 again. You will be limited to one question and one follow-up. I would now like to hand the call over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Elsa Ballard. Please go ahead.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to WorldConnect's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call, which will be presented alongside our live slide presentation. Today's presentation is also available via webcast on our Investor Relations website. I'm Elsa Ballard, Vice President of Investor Relations. With me on the call today is Michael Kaspar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Ira Burns, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I'd like to review our State Parkers 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 risks that could cause actual results to materially differ. Factors that could cause results to materially differ can be found in our most recent Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. World Connect 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 measures is included in our press release and can be found on our website. We will begin with several minutes of prepared remarks, which will then be followed by a question and answer period. At this time, I would like to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Kaspar.

Michael Kaspar Thank you, Elsa, and good afternoon, everyone. I've been spending a great deal of time over the last few months at industry conferences, in the offices of our customers around the world, and engaging with our employees. It is clear to me that now more than ever, the demand for World Connect service is as strong as it's ever been. Our broad base of customers and supply partners are grappling with an industry in flux, from changing sustainability requirements and expectations, to an increasingly prescriptive and disjointed regulatory environment. For nearly 40 years, we have been providing energy solutions, creating value for both suppliers and customers, and I don't believe I have ever experienced a more complicated operating environment for our industry than now. Despite this, we continue to execute on our mission to meet our customers' energy needs safely, reliably, and in the most efficient manner possible. The third quarter demonstrated our ability to exercise financial discipline in managing within a higher interest rate and inflationary environment. We continued to leverage our global operating platform as we saw the near full return of aviation demand while heightening our focus on working capital management. Our marine business delivered solid returns despite experiencing some weakness in a few physical locations and a less constrained credit environment. And our land business began to see our investments in sustainability bear fruit during the quarter. We expect the further stream of activity as we continue to build out our global capabilities. Last quarter, I shared with you our three pillar focus to accelerate growth and diversify earnings by maximizing efficiencies in our conventional businesses, expanding our suite of energy management solutions, and increasing the availability of renewable energy and low carbon fuels. This strategy is exactly aligned to where a customer's current needs are and where their future needs will be. We will do this while optimizing our network of thousands of airports, seaports, card locks, retail stations, and distribution assets. In marine and aviation, we have built a highly competent and efficient global platform with dedicated professionals and established processes. We are replicating this in our land business and expect it to be a material part of meeting our medium term 30% operating margin target. Simultaneously, we are sharpening our portfolio, exiting non-core and low return businesses and reallocating capital for better returns. This is recently evidenced by our addition of 20 card locks in the Midwest to further expand our U.S. land business. And we continue to look for further accretive opportunities to grow our land and global sustainability businesses organically and inorganically. Speaking of sustainability, that business produced an excellent result this quarter, and we continue to expect great things from our team. Sustainability knows no borders or segments, And so we are hyper focused on bringing these solutions to customers across all of our businesses and continuing to evolve our offerings to meet the current and future needs of the marketplace. Finally, we continue to embrace automation and I believe the recent advances in AI will be a game changer. We are already leveraging many of these tools and have been for a long time. We believe AI will improve our efficiency, cost management, and ability to drive top line growth, creating greater market value for us while improving the lives of our employees. Before I wrap up, I'd like to announce that we will be hosting an investor day in March of next year to discuss our corporate strategy in more detail. We'll be sharing more information at a registration link shortly. I'll now turn over the call to Ira. for a financial and business review of the quarter.