World Kinect Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to World Connect Corporation first quarter 2024 earnings conference 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 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Elsa Ballard, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to WorldConnect's first quarter 2024 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 and Communications. With me on the call today is Michael Kasbar, 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 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 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. We assume 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 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 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 Casper.

Thank you, Elsa, and good evening, everyone. Given that we just spoke several weeks ago at our Investor Day, I'm going to keep my remarks brief. We had some ups and downs in the first quarter from a profitability standpoint, and we also generated very strong cash flow. Ira will give more color on this in a few minutes, But in the meantime, I'd like to give a high level update on the focus pass we are on today, building a more rateable and leverageable business model. As you know, we have grown our aviation and marine businesses to create diversified, scalable platforms that are built to weather the dynamics of the marketplace. Within our land business today, we have a higher proportion of variability in our portfolio, and we are actively working to grow and scale those parts of the business that we believe are best suited for increased rateability and operating leverage. As we scale these rateable business activities and further sharpen the portfolio, we believe this variability will be attenuated and result in more rateable and predictable results, improved growth, and solid shareholder return. We've been disciplined about exiting relationships or business activities that we believe no longer provide acceptable returns or fit well within our future strategic plans. This is the sharpening the portfolio message we've been sharing, and a strong example of this is the recently announced sale of Avanode, which we expect to close in the next few weeks. We will continue evaluating our broader portfolio of business activities for further opportunities to drive greater profitability whether it be by acquiring businesses that can enhance current revenue streams or exiting certain activities that may not be core or have the DNA to deliver the returns we expect to generate across our entire business platform. And of course, we will continue to simply make our core businesses as strong and as profitable as they can be. We believe we have done a good job to date of more tightly focusing on our core activities where we have built industry-leading competencies that are strongly valued by our customers and suppliers throughout the world. While it is clear that the most significant opportunities to drive growth and operating leverage may be in our land business, we have core opportunities across the rest of our businesses as well. So whether it be growing our solid card lock and retail business activities in land, or our fantastic network of airport fueling operations across multiple continents, or new and expanded market opportunities in marine where the dry bulk tanker, container, and crew segments are all quite healthy right now, our teams are more focused than ever in driving growth and profitability in these areas and across all of our core businesses. In our sustainability-related activities, we are still in early innings, as is the industry. But we have been building a highly talented team with significant domain expertise, and through carefully matching our talents with the evolving needs of our customers, we believe this revenue stream will blossom over time. Finally, we shared multiple financial targets with you just a few weeks ago. The timing of doing so is no coincidence, as our confidence and strategic clarity in where we are headed has improved. And while we have already driven meaningful improvements in many parts of our business, we are fully aligned on the further moves necessary to realize a step change in our profitability and returns, which we believe will enable us to meet or exceed the targets we have shared. So while every quarter is important, we are focusing on building a stronger foundation for the future, and we look forward to keeping you informed as we continue down this strategic growth plan. And now, as promised, I will turn the call over to Ira, who will provide an overview of our first quarter results. That's right, Ira. That's right, Ira.