Kaiser Aluminum Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Kaiser Aluminum Corporation first quarter 2026 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, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Kaiser Aluminum's first quarter 2026 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 Chairman, 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, 2025. 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 effort. 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 5 contains definitions of 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. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin on slide seven. We're very pleased with our first quarter performance. The momentum we carried out of 2025 not only continued, but in several areas, accelerated. As you saw in our earnings release last night, we are raising our full year outlook, reflecting how quickly the improvement we're seeing is coming together as we execute our strategy and move toward our long-term conversion revenue and EBITDA goals. We believe 2026 represents the opportunity to deliver a true step change in performance, and our first quarter results reinforce that view. This quarter delivered another record for EBITDA and EBITDA margins. New capacity installed over the last several years is ramping well. Customer demand has been stronger than we anticipated coming into the year. Lead times across the industry are beginning to stretch, and pricing continues to firm across many of our products. While metal remains at elevated levels, these higher costs, which we pass through, have not led to any signs of meaningful substitution in our markets, and our supply lines for metal remain secure through the balance of the year, which allows us to stay focused on execution rather than availability. There were four key drivers behind the strength of the results we delivered in the quarter. First, customer activity across all of our end markets exceeded expectations. As lead times extended and pricing firmed, the environment has increasingly rewarded reliability and service. These are exactly the conditions where Kaiser differentiates itself and where our operating discipline creates opportunities to win incremental business. Second, we continue to see meaningful mix improvement at our rolling mill, Warwick. The mix shift towards higher value-added coded volume is fundamental to Warwick's long-term success and underpins our confidence in the margin and EBITDA trajectory of the business. Performance has been encouraging, and demand for coded products remains strong. Based on what we're seeing today, we expect this mix improvement to continue through the balance of the year. Operational performance significantly improved across our operations. With significant startup costs and related disruptions to the operations now behind us as we completed our new investments, strong operational financial performance is returning to more historical levels. Excluding metal lag gains in the year-over-year quarterly results, we saw an approximate 850 basis points margin improvement due to operational performance gains alone. And finally, aluminum prices moved up meaningfully during the quarter, creating a metal tailwind. While beneficial to our financial results, it's modest relative to the structural improvements underway across the business. As always, we operate on a metal-neutral basis, passing through what we can't control while focusing on conversion, productivity, and disciplined capital deployment. I also would like to point out Kaiser's strong competitive position with the growing use of recycled material across our portfolio, which not only supports our sustainability initiatives, but also creates the environment for strong tailwinds under current conditions. I will continue to remind everyone that these conditions can also reverse and become headwinds should metal prices decline in a volatile market. Neil will cover these points in more detail as he walks through financial details related to the quarter. Neil?