NXT Energy Solutions Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Leah and I will be your conferencing operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NXT Energy Solutions 2021 first quarter and operating and financial results conference call. All participants will be in listening only mode for the first part of the conference call with the ability to ask questions after the presentation by the company. For the question and answer session, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you wish to cancel your question, please press the count key. So that all callers have an opportunity to answer a question, we will limit each caller to one question and a follow-up question. But you are welcome to go back and queue if you have any other questions. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. George Lizitas, President and CEO of NXT Energy Solutions. Please go ahead, Mr. Lizitas.

Thank you, Leah, and welcome, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today for NXT Energy Solutions' first quarter 2021 financial and operating results conference call. This is George Lizitas, and joining me today's conference call is Eugene Voshishin, Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Xian Gui of R&D, Director of R&D Research and Development of SFD Sensors, Rashid Tipu, Director of Geosciences for Africa, Asia, and Middle East, Enrica Hung, Director of Geosciences for the Americas, and Mohamed Sakib, Head of Interpretation and Project Engineer. Please be advised that Mr. Sakib has been incorrectly referred to as the director of operations previously. He has never been a director, and his position has always been head of interpretation, project engineer, and no change to his role or responsibility has occurred. The purpose of today's call is to briefly discuss the highlights of the news release of NXT's first quarter 2021 financial and operating results. Following our update, we will open up the line for questions. Please note, all statements made by the company and management during this call are subject to the Reaser's advisory overlooking information and non-GAAP measures set forth in our Q1 2021 results press release and MD&A issued yesterday. All dollar amounts discussed in today's conference call are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. The complete financial and operating results and consolidated financial statements for this first quarter 2021 were published yesterday, May 11th, and are available on NXT's website, CEDAW's website, and soon will be available on EDGAR's website. Now over to Eugene. for the financial review.

Thank you, George, and welcome everyone. As George mentioned, our first quarter 2021 financial statements and management discussion analysis were filed on CDAR's website yesterday and will shortly be available in EDGAR. From a financial perspective, the focus remained on supporting the execution of the business development effort and continuing to control and optimize costs. For the first quarter, our financial results were as follows. Cash and short-term investments were $2.15 million at March 31, 2021, and net working capital was $1.51 million. Operating activities used $0.88 million of cash during the quarter. There was no revenue earned in the first quarter. For the quarter, NXT recorded a net loss of approximately $1.64 million, or $0.03 per share based on 64.5 million weighted average common shares outstanding. This compares to a net loss of $1.33 million in the first quarter of 2020, or 2 cents per share. Total operating expenses for the first quarter were $1.61 million, including survey costs. This included non-cash expenses of $0.47 million related to amortization and stock-based compensation expenses. G&A expenses decreased by $96,000, or 10%, in the first quarter of 2021, compared to 2020 for the following reasons. Salaries, benefits and consulting charges increased by $34,000 or 8% due to an increase in temporary headcount. This was offset by board and professional fees and public company costs which decreased $35,000 or 15% due to decreased insurance costs and legal fees. Premises and administrative overhead costs increased $27,000 for the quarter or 16% due to building common area charges being higher and increased software costs. Business development costs decreased by $127,000 or 97% due to the restrictions on travel from the COVID-19 pandemic. And finally, the stock-based compensation expense was higher by $5,000 or 22% due to the employee share purchase plan which commenced in the fourth quarter of 2020 and has approximately 75% of employee participation. To summarize some key financial points, we ended the quarter with $2.15 million of cash and short-term investments on hand and a net working capital balance of $1.51 million. Net loss for the quarter was $1.64 million. Cash used in operations was $883,000. Our main focus is on the execution of NXT's commercial opportunities. I would now like to hand the call back over to George to further discuss our business update.