Olympic Steel, Inc.

star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Rich Manson, Chief Financial Officer at Olympic Steel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Olympic Steel's earnings call for the first quarter of 2022. Our call this morning will be hosted by our Chief Executive Officer, Rick Marabito, and we will also be joined by our President and Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Greif. Before we begin, I have a few reminders. Some statements made on today's call will be predictive and are intended to be made as forward-looking within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and may not reflect actual results. The company does not undertake to update such statements, changes in assumptions, or changes in other factors affecting such forward-looking statements. Important assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in the company's reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q and the press releases filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During today's discussion, we may refer to adjusted net income per diluted share, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA, which are all non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is provided in the press release that was issued last night and can be found on our website. Today's broadcast will be archived and available for replay on Olympic Steel's website. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, Rich. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss Olympic Steel's results for the first quarter of 2022. I'll begin with some comments about our exceptional performance for the quarter and how we've achieved these results. After my comments, Andrew will review our business segments and provide some additional insights into the current market dynamics. And then Rich will discuss the first quarter financial results in more detail. And of course, as always, then we'll take your questions. It was another quarter of historic performance for Olympic steel. In the first quarter, we reported record sales of $696 million and the second strongest quarter of profitability in our company's history with $58.1 million of EBITDA. Our specialty metals and pipe and tube segments both delivered record quarterly sales and earnings, while our carbon segment posted its second highest quarterly sales along with strong profits. These results are a testament to the strategic actions we have taken to strengthen Olympic Steel and better position us to succeed in all market cycles. We've worked hard to diversify our business, reduce our exposure to cyclical risk, and drive operational efficiencies. And as we saw in the first quarter, our ability to deliver near record profitability in a challenging carbon pricing environment shows that these efforts are working. The resiliency of our carbon segment is especially telling, which Andrew will detail later in this call. Moving forward, we're excited to advance our business through our capital deployment strategy. We've built an outstanding M&A track record with strong first quarter contributions from our recent acquisitions, including Berlin Metals and Action Stainless, as well as our other growth, organic growth initiatives. We continue to actively evaluate potential acquisition targets and growth opportunities, and I believe we're well positioned to execute in 2022. We have plenty of capital to deploy in new opportunities with strong returns that align with our strategy to further diversify our business. Our capital deployment approach is balanced with our commitment to reward shareholders as well. In our earnings release, we announced our regular quarterly dividend of 9 cents per share, and that's for the second consecutive quarter. And if you remember, this was increased from our previous quarterly rate of 2 cents per share. We're also committed to communicating more about our ESG efforts. Later this month, we will publish our first corporate responsibility report, which details our priorities, progress, and goals for our ESG program. And you'll be able to find that report on our website, and we encourage you to check it out. I'm also proud to share that we have joined the PWC CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion Initiative, which is helping us to mobilize corporate America, and CEOs in particular, to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Before I turn the call over to Andrew, I'd like to take a moment to just thank the entire Olympic Steel for their outstanding efforts and dedication to our strategy. Together, we are building a company that achieves sustained success and has a positive impact on our world. Andrew?