Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today’s conference call. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. John Ciroli as he provides some important cautions regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures contained in the earnings materials or made on this call. John, please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Montauk Renewables earnings conference call to review Fiscal 2023 Financial and Operating Results and Developments. I'm John Ciroli, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary at Montauk. Joining me today are Sean McClain, Montauk's President and Chief Executive Officer, to discuss business development; and Kevin Van Asdalan, Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our 2023 financial and operating results. At this time, I would like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement. During this call, certain comments we make constitute forward-looking statements, and as such, involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results or performance to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risk factors and uncertainties are detailed in Montauk Renewables' SEC filings. Our remarks today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. We present EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA metrics because we believe the measures assist investors in analyzing our performance across reporting periods on a consistent basis by excluding items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Additional details regarding these non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our slide presentation in our fiscal 2023 earnings press release and Form 10-K issued and filed this afternoon. Those are available also on our website at ir.montaukrenewables.com. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. And we ask that you please keep to one question to accommodate as many as possible. And with that, I will turn the call over to Sean.

Thank you, John. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. I will begin by summarizing our announced series of development projects we expect to materially contribute to Montauk's multifaceted growth strategy. In December 2023, we finalized a contract for the delivery of 140,000 tons per year of biogenic carbon dioxide from our four Texas RNG facilities to a North American subsidiary of European Energy. In satisfaction of this arrangement, we intend to capture clean and liquefied CO2, which will then be transported to a new Texas-based e-methanol facility of European Energy. The delivery term is expected to last at least 15 years with deliveries expected in 2027. We expect our capital investment to approximate $15 million per facility and anticipate that capital spend to begin during the second half of 2024 as we work to achieve our targeted 2027 commission. During 2023, we announced our planned entrants into South Carolina through the development of a new landfill gas to RNG facility, an opportunity won by Montauk through a competitive bidding process. The planned project is expected to contribute approximately 900 MMBtus, a day of production capacity upon commissioning. We are in the development phase of the project and have started to incur capital expenditures. While we continue to expect the utility interconnection specifically included in our development assumptions to accept our production from this facility, the utility will require certain distribution system upgrades. Though those upgrades do not directly impact our interconnection, they do extend our expectation of the completion of that interconnection and the commissioning of our new RNG facility into 2026. During 2023, we also announced our planned development of a landfill gas to RNG project in Irvine, California at the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill. This new RNG facility is anticipated to process the large…

Thank you, Sean. I will be discussing our 2023 financial and operating results. Please refer to our earnings press release and the supplemental slides that have been posted through our website for additional information. Total revenues in 2023 were $174.9 million, a decrease of $30.7 million or 14.9% compared to $205.6 million in 2022. The primary driver for this decrease relates to a decrease of approximately 16.6% in realized RIN pricing during 2023 of $2.71 compared to $3.25 in 2022. Additionally contributing to the decrease was a decrease in natural gas index pricing of approximately 58.7% in 2023 of $2.74 compared to $6.64 in 2022. Total general and administrative expenses were $34.4 million in 2023, an increase of $0.3 million or 0.8% compared to $34.1 million for 2022. Our general and administrative expenses for 2023 increased approximately $2.1 million compared to 2022 associated with the 2022 Montauk Ag Renewable stock-based compensation amendments to restricted share awards. Partially offsetting this increase was a reversal of approximately $1.0 million in stock-based compensation expense related to forfeited stock awards. Our professional fees expense was $4.6 million in 2023, a decrease of $0.7 million or 12.5% compared to $5.3 million in 2022. Montauk Ag Renewables professional fees for 2023 increased approximately $0.4 million compared to 2022, which is included in the aforementioned total 2023 increase of $2.1 million for Montauk Ag Renewables. Finally, our RIN [ph] expense was $0.7 million in 2023, an increase of $0.3 million or 69.6% compared to $0.4 million in 2022. Turning to our segment operating metrics. I'll begin by reviewing our Renewable Natural Gas segment. We produced 5.5 million MMBtu of RNG during 2023, flat compared to 5.5 million MMBtus produced in 2022. Reduced preventative maintenance and wellfield optimization in 2023 at certain sites led to increased production, notably…

Thank you, Kevin. In closing, and though we don't provide guidance as to our internal expectations on the market price of environmental attributes, including the market price of D3 RINs, we would like to provide our full year 2024 outlook. For 2024, we expect our RNG production volumes to range between 5.8 million and 6.1 million MMBtus with corresponding RNG revenues to range between $195 million and $215 million. We expect our 2024 Renewable Electricity Production volumes to range between 190,000 and 200,000 megawatt hours with corresponding renewable electricity revenues to range between $18 million and $19 million. And with that, we will pause for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Saumya Jain with UBS. Your line is open.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question [indiscernible] hope for. I guess I was wondering if you have a long-term outlook regarding D3 RIN pricing and LCFS pricing? Or how do you see a potential [indiscernible] impacting that?

Excellent question. As we oftentimes say on these calls that we do not give guidance or our views on what the forward prices are for environmental attributes, particularly D3 RINs, we do take note, however, of the 3-year guidance that is provided by the EPA, representing 30% increases in the demand for those attributes. And we do acknowledge based on available data that is on the EPA's site for the renewable fuel standard, the relative monthly generation statistics, which do suggest a recurring shortage of the generation of those attributes related to the run rate that would be more indicative of the demand that you will have for those 3-year RVOs starting with 2024.

Thank you. Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair with Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open.

Thank you and good afternoon. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the Q4 production. If I'm doing my math correctly, it looks like Q4 RNG production was actually down a little bit from Q3, which I remember was impacted by some weather issues. So did those weather issues reoccur in Q4? And what is your outlook for Q1? Would you expect things to bounce back? Thank you.

Matthew, in regards to providing quarterly guidance, we continue to just provide annual guidance for which our guidance ranges are between 5.8 million and 6.1 million MMBtu. In regards to the fourth quarter, weather contributed, but we also had some well -- host wellfield quality issues, primarily at our large site in Cincinnati, Ohio, which impacted our expectations as we closed out the fourth quarter. In regards to ongoing weather anomalies, similar to Sean, not wanting to predict the future of RIN prices, we try to manage our expectations through weather. But as of right now, our existing guidance ranges of between 5.8 million and 6.1 million MMBtu are contemplating all of our expected contributions from our RNG portfolio across the year.

Thank you. Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Shere with Tuohy Brothers. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for the updates and taking the question. Any thoughts specifically about the EBITDA margin in '24 and more generally about the EBITDA ramp that might be expected through '27 at the North Carolina swine waste project is completed. Your Pico expansion is brought online. You had your Apex expansion and then you also have the Blue Granite and Bowerman projects?

Thanks, Craig. Yes, we do anticipate our EBITDA increase in 2024 to follow along with our increase of expect -- from our increase in expectations of volumes, RIN price notwithstanding, based on our internal assumptions. In regards to the ramp in 2025, specifically related to our North Carolina operation. Based on our current expectations, we look to fill around half of our expected output under the Duke Swine REC agreement with revenue starting around the second half of 2025. Thereafter, the EBITDA contributions from a more recent project that we announced, the European Energy a volume metric and price standpoint, I think it would be fair to say from a top line revenue contribution from European Energy, the pricing of that agreement is generally in line with some expected prices from a carbon sequestration tax credit view. However, I do want to note that this is not a tax credit play for us. It is a revenue driver increasing and diversifying our top line revenues whenever we start to deliver our volumetric CO2 to European Energy.

Thank you. Please standby for our next question. We have a follow-up question from the line of Matthew Blair with TPH. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking my follow-up. I was going to ask about your 2024 spending plans, but I'm actually seeing it in the K here. It looks like it's approximately 150 million to 167 million. Is that correct? And could you talk about what's driving the increase year-over-year?

Yes. That is accurate, Matthew. Thank you. More poignantly, our annual maintenance capital disaggregated. We expect that to be between 14 million and 17 million. And then our development project capital ranges between 135 million and 150 million. That's largely driven by our two larger products -- projects, the RNG build on the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill in California as well as our continued development of the up to eight processing reactor lines at our North Carolina location.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Sean for closing remarks.

Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to join us on the conference call today. We look forward to speaking with you on our 2024 first quarter conference call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.