Ascent Industries Co.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Ascent's financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2024. Joining us today are Ascent's Executive Chairman of the Board, Ben Rosenzweig, CEO, Brian Kitchen, CFO, Brian Kavaloskis, 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 with 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 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. 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 a webcast link that is also posted on the investor section of the company's website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Ascent's Executive Chairman of the Board, Ben Rosenzweig. Ben, over to you.

Thank you, Cody. And good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased that we reported improved financial results for the second quarter as our stabilization efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Though the broader demand environment remains soft, we did see some volume pickup across both segments due to churning through some slow-moving inventory as we continue shifting towards more profitable product lines. We expect demand will slowly improve through the remainder of the year and see more substantial growth opportunities to occur in 2025 and beyond. In the meantime, we've continued to diligently focus on our near-term initiatives to cut costs, drive operational efficiencies, and optimize our product mix in both segments. There's still more to be done on all these fronts, but we're pleased to see our initial efforts working. We expect financial improvements in the back half of the year to come from these internal self-help initiatives rather than anticipating any meaningful uptick in demand on the sales side. Brian will provide all the specific details on each segment, but I'm pleased that we're on the right track towards executing our long-term vision for both of these businesses. We continue to take steps towards maximizing the value of our tubular segment as we execute basic business fixes while keeping our main focus on driving long-term profitable growth initiatives for the specialty chemical segment. We remain confident in our belief that this segment, run by the team that Brian and Ryan are building, can deliver more profitable and predictable revenue streams, resulting in better value for shareholders over the long term. Turning to our capital allocation priorities, we remain comfortable with where our current liquidity position is today. We have ample availability within our revolving credit facility that allows us to be flexible should an opportunity arise to deploy capital to high conviction and accretive areas, but we're still focused in this moment on optimizing the current operations across the company. We continue to repurchase shares in the open market and remain committed to exploring all avenues to do so as long as our stock trades below our expectation of the company's intrinsic value. It's been our near-term mission to restore credibility with the market and, overall, we're making progress executing against stated goals and I remain highly confident in our strategic direction. In the near term, we expect to step up our investor relations efforts as we have a story that I believe resonates well with the small-cap investment community and it's incumbent on us to bring that message to a wider audience. I'm pleased that we've returned assent to positive adjusted EBITDA, strengthened our balance sheet, and positioned the company to better capitalize on future growth opportunities. I look forward to continued momentum in the quarters in years to come. 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.