Innospec Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the InnoSpecs second quarter 2024 earnings release conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker, Mr. David Jones, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to InnoSpec's second quarter earnings call. The earnings released for the quarter in this presentation are posted on the company's website. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are predictions and predictions about... These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risk and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties are detailed in InnoSPEC 10-K, 10-Qs, and other filings with the SEC. Please see the SEC site and InnoSPEC site for these unrelated documents. In today's presentation, we've also included non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is an earnings release. The non-GAAP financial measure should not be considered as a substitute for those prepared in accordance with GAAP. They are included as additional items to aid investor understanding of the company's performance in addition to the impact that these items and events had on financial results. With me today from Innispec are Patrick Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ian Clementson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And with that, I turn it over to you, Patrick.

Thank you, David, and welcome everyone to Inspec's second quarter 2024 conference call. This was a mixed quarter for Inspec, as performance chemicals and fuel specialties delivered strong double-digit operating income growth and margin improvement, while oilfield services production results declined as expected. Performance chemicals delivered further improvement, as operating income more than doubled over last year. While customers remain disciplined in their order patterns, volumes improved in our key end markets driven by our mild and natural personal care technologies. We remain optimistic that we can maintain this improvement in the second half of 2024. Supported by our strong innovation pipeline, our target remains to return operating income rates and margins to full year 2022 levels. In addition, The integration and performance of our recent QGP acquisition is proceeding to plan. Fuel Specialties delivered double-digit operating income growth driven by higher sales and gross margins, which were at the upper end of our targeted 32% to 35% range. Leveraging our global footprint and innovation capabilities, our team continues to build a strong pipeline of future growth opportunities in both fuel and non-fuel applications. As expected, oilfield services results were impacted by significantly lower production chemical activity in the quarter. We are seeing a continuation of below average inventory levels combined with lower chemical usage and treatment rates in certain high volume applications. As of the end of July, we have not seen this activity recover as we previously anticipated, and we currently assume these lower levels will persist through the third quarter and possibly through the remainder of the year. We are focusing on working with our customers to optimize levels of consumption and performance on these production chemical applications and expect to have more detail on trajectory of recovery in the coming quarter. In addition, we continue to execute on multiple growth and margin improvement opportunities in our other oil field segments. Now I'll turn the call over to Ian Clementson, who will review our financial results in more detail. Then I will return with some concluding comments. After that, Ian and I will take your questions. Ian?