Wayne Barr
Analyst · B. Riley Financial. Please proceed with you question
Thanks, Garrett. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I hope you and your families are all doing well. On today’s call, I will walk through some third quarter highlights and discuss our recent progress toward launching and completing the successful refinancing, which will strengthen our balance sheet and position us for long-term success. Our CFO, Mike Sena, will then provide more details on our third quarter performance, and then we’ll end by taking some questions. While we continue to see some impact from the pandemic, our third quarter also showed the resiliency of our businesses and their ability to generate solid results, as the economy gradually rebounds. We also renamed some of our segments to better reflect their businesses and where we believe they have potential future opportunities. Additionally, the Board has made significant progress in assessing each of our businesses and is close to solidifying the path forward. Our focus has been threefold: simplifying the overall portfolio, determining which businesses are poised to take advantage of market trends in the medium to long-term, and identifying which businesses are best situated to contribute to our shorter-term efforts to refinance our senior secured notes. Overall, we were pleased with our operational performance, which is further evidence of the strength of the platform and the value we believe is inherent at our various segments, which I will now review. First, our infrastructure segment, formerly known as construction, generated adjusted EBITDA in the quarter of nearly $18 million, a solid performance and further proof of DBM’s ability to withstand the challenging economic environment. It also continues to win new awards, seeing its backlog improve by $26 million in the quarter to $436 million, and also maintains a substantial adjusted backlog of $640 million which positions it well to further rebound and capitalize on potential trends in the market as the economy continues to improve. Meanwhile, in our Life Sciences segment, R2 commenced the pre-launch of its Glacial Rx skin lightening and brightening system and is expecting a formal launch in Q1 of 2021. Initial preorders for the products, which include the FDA-approved device and consumables, are strong. We look forward to the full commercial launch early next year. Additionally, we were pleased to see that MediBeacon received an additional commitment from Huadong for $20 million in non-dilutive funding over the next 2 years to pursue Class I status in China, which will allow the device to immediately enter the Chinese hospital system. The payment will be treated as an advance of royalties for anticipated sales in China. MediBeacon is on track to begin its pivotal study in the third quarter of 2021. Both R2 and MediBeacon are clear indicators of the value inherent at our Life Sciences segment, and we are excited to see their continued progress toward commercialization and FDA approval, respectively. As a reminder, both R2 and MediBeacon are fully funded for ongoing activities, and as a result, we currently do not anticipate a need for further capital investment from HC2. We noted on our last call that we were in the final stages of extending the debt maturity at the HC2 Broadcasting holdco, and at the end of August we successfully completed a 1-year extension on that debt. Since that time, and as agreed upon with our lenders as part of extending the debt, we have started selling non-core assets to begin reducing the debt burden at Broadcasting. We believe delevering this platform will better position us to maximize the value of our network of nearly 230 stations in 97 DMAs. We remain well positioned to take advantage of opportunities in the market as cord cutting further accelerates. As you may know, our Spectrum segment controls the most operating broadcast spectrum in the U.S., with more than 2.3 billion megahertz pops of UHF and VHF spectrum. We are pleased with the path and gradual progress towards reducing debt and the continued strong relationship we have with our lenders. At our Clean Energy segment, Beyond6 continues to perform very well during the pandemic, growing its adjusted EBITDA approximately 61% compared to the prior-year period, aided by the Alternative Fuels Tax Credit as well as increased demand for fueling. In addition, Beyond6 recently entered into an exclusive partnership with Hyliion, a maker of electronic drivetrain Class 8 trucks that use an onboard CNG generator. As an alternative fuel solution platform, Beyond6 has become a leader in CNG and RNG fueling. Drew and his team have continued to do a tremendous job taking advantage of the positive trends in the EV and renewable energy industries. There is a vast amount of interest and investment being made in these in related sectors as the world works toward reducing carbon admissions and Beyond6 is very well positioned to grow long-term, while making a real difference in improving our environment. Meanwhile, Continental Insurance ended the quarter with strong total adjusted capital of $374 million, and we are still actively exploring strategic alternatives for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. Last month, we announced the sale of PTGi Carrier Services, our telecom subsidiary, and after receiving FCC approval, closed on the transaction this past week. We appreciate the efforts of Craig and his team during the past 6 years and wish the purchaser success with PTGi. The divestiture was a step towards simplifying our overall business in advance of a refinancing, and we expect to utilize net proceeds for working capital purposes. As we have noted repeatedly, our top near-term priorities at the holding company are improving our capital structure and reducing overhead. While we continue to take steps to reduce corporate overhead, executing in the near term on our first major goal of refinancing our 11.5% notes and reducing our debt service will position us well for long-term success and generating value for our stockholders. We have spoken frequently about the fact that the refinancing will involve multiple steps, one of which we took this past quarter with the launch of a $65 million rights offering, which is partially backstopped by Lancer Capital, which is headed by our chairman, Avi Glazer. We acknowledge and welcome the continued support of Avi and other of our major stockholders, and look forward to a successful conclusion of the rights offering later this month. After a comprehensive review led by our Board, we determined that, of several means available to us to address our capital needs, the rights offering was the most prudent way to raise capital in order to strengthen our balance sheet and best position the company in advance of the refinancing, as well as provide current stockholders with the opportunity to maintain their percentage of ownership. We believe the partial backstop from our chairman will help ensure the success of the rights offering and displays his firm belief in HC2, in full alignment with all of our stockholders. The rights offering is slated to expire on November 20 and subject to stockholder approval of an increase in the number of authorized shares of our common stock, the net proceeds from the rights offering will be available for general corporate purposes, including debt service and working capital. Our current efforts have been and are focused on the refinancing. There are various pieces to a successful outcome here, and we believe the rights offering is a key piece. We are hard at work on the other pieces and will provide more detail on them in due course. As we think about the longer-term strategy for HC2, we believe, in general, we have a great set of assets. Some of them, we believe, are positioned to be able to extract value almost immediately, and others have more short- to medium-term potential. Once we have fixed our capital structure with the various steps in place and to come, our focus will be on building value over the medium and long term with our remaining assets. To sum up, I want to thank all of our employees at HC2 and our subsidiaries for their hard work and dedication in helping us make steady progress over the past few months. We are all firmly aligned in pulling in the same direction with respect to what we need to achieve in the near term and beyond. By executing on our near-term goal of generating a successful outcome for the refinancing, we will be best positioned for the long term to strengthen our balance sheet and maximize the full potential and value of our businesses in order to create long-term stockholder value. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Mike Sena, who will discuss some of our financial highlights.