Ascent Industries Co.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Ascent's financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. Joining us today are Ascent's Executive Chairman of the Board, Ben Rosenzweig, President and CEO, Chris Hutter, CFO, Bill Steckel, and the company's Outside Investor Relations Advisor, Cody Cree. Following their remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Cody Cree as he reads the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. Cody, please go ahead.

Thanks, Cherie. Before we continue, I'd like to remind all participants that the discussion today may contain certain forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on information currently available to us and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. ASCENT advises all of those listening to this call to review the latest 10Q and 10K posted on its website for a summary of these risks and uncertainties. ASCENT does not undertake the responsibility to update any forward-looking statements. Further, the discussion today may include non-GAAP measures. In accordance with Regulation G, the company has reconciled these amounts back to the closest GAAP-based measurement. The reconciliations can be found in the earnings press release issued earlier today and posted on the investor section of the company's website at ascentco.com. Please note that this call is available for replay via webcast link that is also posted on the investor section of the company's website. Additionally, an updated presentation is available on the investor relations section of the website, which we encourage you to view. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Ascend's Executive Chairman of the Board, Ben Rosenzweig. Ben?

Thank you, Cody, and good afternoon, everyone. After a challenging last few quarters and the closing of our Munholl operations officially behind us, we began seeing signs of improvement within our operations during the third quarter. I want to be clear that we still do not view our current level of performance as acceptable, and there is much work left to be done, but we are turning the corner. Persistent volatility in the macro environment still hampered sales volumes across both segments in the third quarter as we continued to see larger-scale projects being pushed out or delayed, along with several of our end markets experiencing a decline in demand. Despite the lower sales volumes, we were able to return to positive adjusted EBITDA in the quarter and continued to manage working capital more efficiently. Most impactfully, towards the end of the quarter, we were pleased to welcome Brian Kitchen to Ascent as president of Ascent Chemicals. Brian joins Ascent with a proven track record of taking underperforming businesses and putting them back on the road to growth and profit maximization. We believe that Brian has the potential to take Ascent Chemicals to new heights with a durable growth strategy, and we are pleased with the actions he has already taken to return this segment to profitable growth. Within our tubular segment, we continue to streamline and optimize our operations now that we have completely shuttered our Monhal facility. While we do expect some cash and non-cash costs within the ranges we laid out last call, we have worked through the vast majority of the expected costs and look forward to having this completely off our books as we enter 2024. We continue to believe we have a healthy asset base and strong reputation within the tubular industry that can return to consistent growth and generate the earnings and cash flow to fund future growth opportunities. Similar to our specialty chemicals segment, our sales are continuing to be impacted by the broader economic slowdown. While some of our end markets have been more affected than others, particularly those for premium ornamental stainless steel tubing that go into more discretionary purchases, it is safe to say that we are seeing a heightened level of caution when it comes to spending across many of our distribution customers. We still believe there is healthy long-term demand potential for premium American-made tubular products, and we're continuing to optimize our operations to be ready for when the pendulum swings back in our favor. In terms of capital allocation, our biggest priority has been and will continue to be repurchasing shares in the open market. In fact, we've repurchased nearly 100,000 shares in the open market through the first nine months of 2023. We were able to ramp up our volume significantly in Q3 with the 10B5 program in place, repurchasing nearly 45,000 shares which is almost 2.5 times more than we were able to repurchase last quarter. Now that we can effectively repurchase stock in the open market nearly every single day, we continue to expect to be as aggressive as possible on this front. M&A does remain a long-term focus for our organization, but we recognize the need to focus on building a more stable foundation prior to layering in larger deals. We are nowhere near satisfied with how this year has gone, but I do believe that where we sit today And as we work through our budgeting process for 2024, we've made it over the largest of our hurdles, and the company is well positioned to be much more focused and efficient. We continue to appreciate the patience of our shareholders and remain aligned with your interests as the largest holders of the company's shares. We've unquestionably made mistakes, but have learned from them and feel very confident in the team we've assembled to lead this company into 2024. We look forward to re-earning your trust over the coming quarters. Now I'd like to pass the call over to Chris to provide more details on our operational performance in those segments. I'll be back to answer any questions during the Q&A portion. Chris, over to you.