Freightcar America, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Freight Car America's first quarter 2021 conference call. At this time, all parts of the events are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a 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, Lisa Fortuna, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you and welcome. Joining me today are Jim Meyer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Terry Rogers, Chief Financial Officer, and Matt Ton, Chief Commercial Officer. I'd like to remind everyone that statements made during this conference call relating to the company's expected future performance, future business prospects, or future events or plans may include forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Participants are directed to Freight Car America's 2020 Form 10-K for a description of certain business risks, some which may be outside of the control of the company that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statement. We expressly disclaim any duty to provide updates to our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. During today's call, there will also be a discussion of some items that do not conform to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release issued this morning. Our 10Q and earnings release for the first quarter of 2021 are posted on the company's website at freightcaramerica.com. With that, let me now turn the call over to Jim for a few opening remarks.

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. When we reported our full year 2020 results just a few months ago, we spent considerable time discussing the transformation of Freight Car America, our ambitions to become the most efficient, highest quality railcar producer in North America, and how 2020 and 2021 would fundamentally transform us as a company and set us up for the future. Our goal was to get ahead of an industry recovery and put ourselves in pole position for the start of the upturn, and we believe we have done that. For the first quarter of 2021, we delivered revenues that were up significantly year over year, and we achieved positive gross margin for the second consecutive quarter. We executed directly against our scheduled production plan and did so during an operationally difficult period as we completed the final stages of the production wind down and closure of the Shoals plant, while also continuing to wrap up and build out the Castano's footprint. While it is still early days, we are confident in our direction and the pace of what we believe will be our renewed growth. And for this, I would like to thank all our dedicated and talented employees who are key to what we are accomplishing. Our talent base has never been longer. Last quarter, we also announced that our board had approved the construction of our own fabrication shop, which we believe will allow us to make the large majority of our fabrications in-house starting within 12 months, as well as in addition to our wheel and axle shop. Each of these new facility additions will bring additional capability and efficiencies. The project is moving along according to plan, and we expect to be fully operational no later than early next year. In addition, and as we have discussed before, the facility in Mexico was purposefully built to expand as the industry and market dynamics dictate. We are now in the early stages of planning for additional lines. It is premature to discuss the timeline and costs for what will almost certainly be the next phase of expansion. However, I do expect to be in a position to outline more details on this topic on the second or third quarter calls. On the operational side, there are headwinds that we and the industry are facing. Steel prices remain at all-time high levels, more than double over the past year. And we need to continue to work very hard to both protect supply and find ways to mitigate these cost pressures. In addition to the tight and expensive steel supply, the competitive landscape continues to be intense with manufacturers anxious to fill their factories. The good news is that orders are increasing and demand recovery seems to be gaining momentum. However, during the near term, Pricing intensity and still cost will put pressure on margins until things begin to fall back into balance. In the meantime, there is even more reason for us to be pleased to be in the Castanos facility. As we previously noted on our last earnings call, there were significant costs associated with the exit from Shoals and transition to Castanos, and these impacted our results in the first quarter. Jerry will discuss the details, but it is important to note that this was the main headwind for the quarter, and without these one-time costs, our margins would have been even higher. Matt will speak about the broader macro environment in more detail during his part of today's call, but we continue to be encouraged by the increasingly positive trends we are seeing across the industry. with rail cars and storage declining and rail traffic increasing. Order activity is starting to move in the right direction, and we are seeing continued positive dynamics in our conversion business. As we also noted back in March, we are very encouraged by the number of new sales inquiries since the start of the year. We are also now starting to close new orders with activity continuing to pick up pace. As a result, we have raised our 2021 delivery guidance to between 1600 and 1750 rail cars, up from our original outlook of between 1400 and 1600 rail cars. The year 2021 is about building momentum in support of expansion and profitable growth as we move forward. We're very pleased with how the new operation is performing, the new cost structure, and most of all, the new team. We believe that we are in a good position to start winning. I'll now turn the call over to Terry to provide more detail on the financials. Terry?