Ascent Industries Co.

And thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Ascend's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2024. Joining us today are Ascend's executive chairman of the board, Ben Rosenzweig, and CEO Brian Kitchen, CFO Ryan Cavalasquez, 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 send a 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 proceed.

Thanks, Olivia. 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 gap-based measurement. Reconciliations can be found in the earnings press release issued earlier today and posted on the Investors 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 Investors section of the company's website. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Ascent Executive Chairman of the Board, Ben Rosensweig. Ben, over to you.

Thank you, Cody, and good afternoon, everyone. Demand challenges across both of our segments continue to persist during the first quarter, which drove overall weak consolidated financial performance. While it's not yet evident in our financial results, we're making progress in all of our near-term initiatives, which include cost savings, operational efficiencies, and product mix optimization. Brian and Ryan have been working extremely hard to right the ship, and we remain on track to see improvements across our financial results in the back half of this year. We expect that we're only a few months away from results that are more representative of run rate performance for our existing asset base. Though we're hopeful of some near-term market recovery, we neither assume nor rely on that taking place for us to meet our internal plan. I'll let Brian dive into the details on segment-specific initiatives, but I wanted to provide a brief recap of our plans for both segments. Within tubular products, we're working tirelessly to replicate and implement strategies that we believe can positively impact results in the near term. I'm pleased to report our operations at Bristol were fully restored after the unexpected downtime that significantly impacted our production capacity starting in Q3. While we saw a bit of improvement in Q1, the restored production capacity will begin flowing through more meaningfully in Q2 and going forward. Overall, I believe we're on the right path towards maximizing the value of this segment. In specialty chemicals, our top priority remains capitalizing on attractive long-term growth opportunities. We've made positive strides as we've begun to reconfigure our product mix towards branded product sales without the need for significant capital investment in the near term. Bryan is executing towards a very specific vision for Ascent Chemicals, and it starts with breaking breathing life back into some of the branded product offerings that we've had on the shelf the past few years, along with better utilizing the production resources we currently have in our toolbox. We remain confident in our belief that this segment can deliver more profitable and predictable revenue streams, resulting in better value for our shareholders over the long term. Our capital priorities also remain unchanged. We've been repurchasing shares in the open market as much as possible and will continue to do so as long as our stock trades below our expectation of the company's intrinsic value. M&A continues to stay warm on the back burner while we maintain our internal operational focus for the near term. As always, our board continues to evaluate other actionable options to accelerate a creative capital deployment. We're moving in the right direction towards durable shareholder value creation. I know we've had setbacks throughout the last year, and we're working hard every day to restore credibility amongst our shareholders, but the optimism for our future throughout the organization is real. We remain debt-free, and I'm proud that we're able to show a significant year-over-year improvement in our liquidity as we continue to progress our working capital initiatives. That focus has created ample availability within our evolving credit facility that gives us optionality when the right opportunities to deploy capital present themselves. Overall, the entire organization is working tirelessly and cohesively to return the positive and growing EBITDA, and we're looking forward to delivering improved financial results in the very near future. Now I'd like to pass the call over to Brian to provide details on our operations across both segments. I'll be available later on to answer any questions. Brian, over to you.