Good morning and welcome to Genie Energy’s Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation by Genie Energy’s management, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brian Siegel of Hayden IR.

Thank you, operator. With me today are Michael Stein, Genie Energy’s CEO; and Avi Goldin, Genie Energy’s CFO, who will discuss operational and financial results. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to those discussed in the reports that we file periodically with the SEC. Genie assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements that we have made or may make, or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that we forecast. During the remarks, management makes reference to adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure. Management believes that its measure of adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to both management and investors that supplement our core operating results. Our earnings release, which is posted on the genie.com IR page, includes a reconciliation of consolidated adjusted EBITDA to its nearest comparable GAAP measures, consolidated net income and income from operations for all periods presented. In addition, adjusted EBITDA for applicable segments are reconciled in the earnings release to the respective segments’ income from operations for all periods presented. I will now turn the conference over to Michael Stein, Genie’s Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you Brian and welcome to our investors and other stakeholders listening today. During the second quarter, we built on our positive first quarter momentum, continuing to add significant numbers of new retail energy customers, expanding and advancing projects within our solar project pipeline and delivering very strong financial results, including record levels of second quarter revenue and income from operations. At GRE, commodity prices [ph] again remained stable during the quarter. In this favorable environment, we pushed to acquire new customers. By quarters end, we had added 75,000 gross new meter ads in the quarter, more than double the year-ago pace. RCEs increased by 45% to 380,000 and meters by 36% to 381,000. We are now serving more RCEs than ever before in the company's history. Financially, the increase in meter acquisitions is reflected in both our increased sales and marketing spend and in our growing revenue base. Meanwhile, our churn rate dropped to 4.3% from 4.4% in the prior and year ago quarters. We are particularly pleased with this since churn usually accelerates during higher customer acquisition periods. The current decrease reflects great work from our customer attention team, which is making a more significant impact with each passing quarter. A big shout out to them for a job well done. We will continue to focus on minimizing our churn even as we further build our customer base in upcoming quarters. At Genie Renewables, or GREW, we continue to build our pipeline of company owned projects in the second quarter. We gain side control on another five projects, totalling roughly 30 megawatts, bringing the total number of pipeline projects to 15 with an aggregate 108 megawatts of potential power generation. In April, we broke ground on our first community solar project, a project in Perry, New York, and…

Thank you, Michael, and thanks to everyone on the call for joining us this morning. My remarks today focus on our financial results for three months ended June 30, 2023. Throughout my remarks, I'll primarily compare second quarter 2023 to the second quarter of 2022 to remove from consideration the seasonal factors that are characteristic of our retail energy business. The second quarter is typically impacted by seasonally low levels of per meter electricity and gas consumption, as it falls between the year’s peak heating months in the first quarter and peak cooling months in the third quarter. Genie’s second quarter financial results again reflected our retail business is very strong underlying fundamentals and continued investments to build out our renewables platform. At GRE, we achieved record second quarter revenue, gross profit, income from operations, and adjusted EBITDA powered by the rapid growth of our customer base in the first half of this year, margins for the quarter were strong by historical standards, although slightly below last year's exceptional second quarter. At Genie Renewables, we continue to make progress in our solar generation development type line, while our other renewables businesses performed well. From a balance perspective, our strong operating results for this quarter enable us to further fortify our financial position, even as we continue to return value to shareholders through quarterly common stock dividends and their redemption of the outstanding shares are our preferred stock. Now let's look at the quarter's results in more detail. The second quarter consolidated revenue increased 40% to $93 million driven by our retail business. At GRE, second quarter revenue increased by 42% to $90 million on strong electricity sales, which increased by 51% to $80 million. Kilowatt hour sold increased by 47% on a comparable percentage increase in average electric meter served.…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Narita Fruta [ph], a private investor.

Yes, hi, guys. Congrats. Really amazing quarter, very impressive. My first question is, it's great that you're raising estimates, and I'm just wondering right now, how conservative those estimates are considering the growth of meters and the on-going heat wave across the country where ACs are running nonstop. So I assume the electrical bills will be up significantly in quarter 3. And I'm just wondering if you can comment on that situation and kind of what you're seeing?

Hi. Thanks. Thanks for the warm wishes. We're going to stick by that guidance. We feel very, very confident that we're going to hit it. Yes, throughput is strong during this summer. No question about it.

And then how does it work in terms of, the wholesale costs when the electricity usage is going up so significantly, especially in Texas? Are you guys affected by that at all?

Yes, Texas, we've definitely seen a few days of price spikes throughout the summer, but it hasn't been for a sustained period. It's more a few hours a day here and there. So it's nothing like what we saw during Winter Storm Uri. We don't have those concerns. As far as the rest of the country, costs have stayed pretty tame relative to the hot weather that was expected or that we've been experiencing, rather. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that we had a large natural gas storage excess across the country. So we're in good shape.

Great. And just one more quick question. Do you have any update on the cash that's held by the U.K. administrators? I'm not really clear on where that would show up in the balance sheet or whether you got that money back yet?

I'll let Avi talk to where it would show up on the balance sheet. We haven't gotten money back yet, but that is definitely making its way through the courts and the administration process. We do expect resolution this year.

Hi, Narita [ph]. This is Avi. So that would show up in current assets of discontinued operations on the balance sheet.

Okay. All right. I see it. Thanks a lot.

And that's part of that number. Other elements in there as well.

Okay. Thanks. Great quarter again. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes our question-and-answer session and conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.