Kaiser Aluminum Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Kaiser Aluminum Corporation's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Kim Orlando, with Addo Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kaiser Aluminum's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. If you have not seen a copy of our earnings release, please visit the investor relations page on our website at kaiseraluminum.com. We have also posted a PDF version of the slide presentation for this call. Joining me on the call today are President and Chief Executive Officer Keith Harvey, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Neil West. Before we begin, I'd like to refer you to the first four slides of our presentation and remind you that the statements made by management and the information contained in this presentation that constitute forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations. For a summary of specific risk factors that could cause results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements, Please refer to the company's earnings release and reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the full year ended December 31, 2023. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company's expectations. In addition, we have included non-GAAP financial information in our discussion. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the earnings release and in the appendix of the presentation. Reconciliations of certain forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures are not provided because certain items required for such reconciliations are outside of our control and or cannot be reasonably predicted or provided without unreasonable efforts. Any reference to EBITDA in our discussion today means adjusted EBITDA, which excludes non-run rate items for which we have provided reconciliations in the appendix. Further, slide five contains definitions and terms and measures that will be commonly used throughout today's presentation. At the conclusion of the company's presentation, we will open the call for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Keith Harvey. Keith?

Thanks, Kim. And thank you all for joining us for a review of our second quarter 2024 results. Turning to slide seven. Operationally, our businesses generally perform very well in the quarter as demand met or exceeded expectations. As discussed previously, we have been focused on stabilizing operations, improving efficiencies, lowering costs, and aggressively managing working capital. As a result, we generated EBITDA of $54 million during the second quarter, which includes a non-cash GAAP LIFO charge of approximately $9 million, reflecting significant inventory reduction during the quarter. Neil will provide more details on the quarterly results in his comments. To summarize activity in our end markets, aerospace and high-strength demand mirrored our strong first quarter results, despite a reduction of large commercial jet builds in the quarter. This illustrates the strength of our diversified focus and product mix in this category, which includes defense, space, business jet, and industrial applications, all of which remained healthy. In packaging, Underlying demand was stronger than expected, but we were unable to capitalize with improved shipments, mainly due to extended planned outages from the first quarter and an unplanned outage in our hot mill during the second quarter, which reduced our shipments. In general engineering, demand and pricing remained stable following 18 to 20 consecutive months of destocking that abated in April, while in auto, we expect we continue to benefit from modest demand improvements and improved pricing. For the remainder of 2024, we will remain focused on the execution of our growth strategy, improving efficiencies across facilities, and continuing to execute our metal sourcing strategy to drive enhanced margin performance. I'll now turn the floor over to Neil to discuss the quarter in more detail And then I'll be back to discuss our outlook. Neil.