Anaergia Inc.

Hello and welcome to Energia's fourth quarter and year-end 2021 conference call. My name is Lauren and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star raised by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Darlene Red from Energia's Investor Relations to begin. Darlene, please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Lauren, and good morning, everyone. On this call, we'll be discussing our earnings for Energia's fourth quarter and year-end of December 31st, 2021. If you're following along on our slide deck, I'll be directing my comments to slides one through three. Today, I am joined by Dr. Andrew Benedek, Energia's founder, board chairman, and CEO, Dr. Yaniv Sherson, Energia's chief operating officer, and Mr. Hani Casey, Energy's Chief Financial Officer. Now, before beginning our formal remarks, we'd like to refer listeners to slide two of the presentation, which contains a caution on forward-looking information and a note on the use of non-IFRS measures. Listeners are reminded that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements that reflect current views with respect to future events. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. Energia doesn't undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except as may be required by applicable laws. Listeners are urged to review the full discussion of these factors in the company's prospectus, which is filed with the Canadian securities regulators. Lastly, while this conference call is open to the public, And for the sake of brevity, questions will be prioritized for analysts. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Andrew.

Thank you very much, Darlene. I'm on slide four, which summarizes the quarter. First and foremost, you can see that our backlog continues to increase. significantly quarter to quarter. A lot of our growth has been happening in within the European region, with seven facilities being built, and also increasing capital sales. The Market outlook is particularly promising in Europe. And they've outlined that in the press release associated with the quarter, as well as an earlier one. Our revenue has gone up 20%, which is relatively slow for what we're expecting to do. But it's still a healthy growth. And the reason for the slower growth has been, as we've been saying over and over, the slowness of the ramp up in Rialto, and also somewhat slower supply line related issues. Overall, the quarter results, are in line with our excellent analysts' predictions and is continuing the trend that we established going in the positive direction. I'm moving on to slide five. And I want everybody to understand that what I have believed from the start and the reason I started the company is that indeed a very significant solution to climate change is renewable natural gas and that as climate change worsens the outlook for us will continue to improve what i didn't expect is the security issues as well that has happened in europe due to the recent conflict, continuing conflict. Although prices for gas in Europe have been constrained even prior to the conflict, and even the conflict is settled today, it will continue to be high for wholesale gas. But in addition, the security issue in Europe has led to dramatic increase in targets And it will eventually follow with incentives to produce more and more renewable natural gas. And some of the countries, in particular the one that started out Germany, is now also going to be entering the market in a big way because simultaneously with the security concerns that Germany now has, it has also established new standards to a European standard called RET2. which, in fact, helps all renewable forms of energy, and in particular, renewable natural gas. Now, in Germany, is where we started, and we have a significant number of customers that will need help to take advantage of the current gas-related changes and as most of these customers are on electric power and they will be shifting to to gas in terms of north america while the gas prices the wholesale fossil gas prices have not moved all that much there is still very significant movement and in particular is a big one in california with a new law that's going into effect called SB 1440, which requires the purchase of renewable natural gas, and it's particularly focused on the kind of gas we create, and it gives us a floor. The LCF price plus rinse will still be higher, but we think that having a floor is a really good thing over a longer term, and we will be taking advantage of this over time it is specifically designed to focus on waste related gas generation within the state and as you all know we're in a very strong position within california for this in addition over above california other states are have already established or are establishing similar incentives as California for low-carbon fuel standards. And also, many utilities, not just the California utilities, will be either required or voluntarily will be purchasing gas under long-term contracts. In Canada, We all know that Fortis and Energy here in Quebec are already purchasing renewable natural gas on long-term contracts, similar to what Fortis is trying to do in California. And we're expecting new standards from the federal government that will also promote the use of renewable natural gas. So overall, the market has never been more positive. And I'm I believe it will continue to be positive and even more positive as time goes on. At this point, I hand it over to Yaniv to update you on the operation sign.