Olympic Steel, Inc.

At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would 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 2023. 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 live 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, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Olympic Steel's 2023 first quarter results. I'll begin with an overview of another strong quarter for Olympic Steel, driven by our ongoing strategy to diversify and strengthen our company. Then Andrew will review highlights from each segment and provide some comments on market conditions. Following that, Rich will discuss our financial results in more detail. And then as always, we will open up the call for your questions. Our year is off to a strong start. For the first quarter, Olympic Steel reported sales of $573 million and adjusted EBITDA of $28.6 million, with balanced earnings from all three of our segments. Overall customer demand remained steady, with metal distribution shipments increasing 3% from a year ago and significantly increasing 15% from the seasonally slower fourth quarter. And as we mentioned on our last call, after six months of declining steel prices, we began to see price increases in December of last year, and these supply-driven increases accelerated as we entered 2023. At the end of the first quarter, hot rolled index pricing was up 74% from the beginning of the year. Our acquisition of MetalFab in January was a highlight for the quarter. As the second largest acquisition in our history and our sixth acquisition in the last five years, Metal Fab represents the latest success in our strategy to diversify and strengthen Olympic Steel. As you'll recall, Metal Fab broadens our product offerings, capabilities, and geographic reach by producing venting and filtration products for residential, commercial, and industrial applications. Products are manufactured primarily of coated carbon and stainless steel and aluminum in our two Wichita, Kansas facilities. Included in our carbon segment, we're thrilled with a fast start in the performance of MetalFab. As Rich will highlight later, the impacts of one-time acquisition expenses and purchase accounting adjustments are now behind us in the first quarter, and we will see the benefit of MetalFab's earnings in the second quarter of 2023 followed by meaningful synergies beginning in the second half of the year. While successfully integrating MetalFab is a priority for our team, Olympic Steel remains extremely well positioned to identify and pursue additional acquisition opportunities that advance our strategy. Our balance sheet is incredibly strong, and with the increase in our revolving credit line executed in conjunction with the MetalFab deal, we now have record levels of capital and borrowing availability to invest in organic growth initiatives, automation, and further acquisitions that align with our strategic priorities. We're excited about the future of Olympic Steel and the prospects to build our business model for sustainable long-term success. We also recently issued our second corporate responsibility report, which can be accessed on our website. The report highlights our progress in ESG, DEI, safety, and our other core value initiatives at Olympic Steel. As we look ahead, we understand that the near-term macroeconomic picture is unsettled. However, demand from our industrial OEMs remains steady, and we expect the second quarter to look a lot like our first quarter. We have demonstrated that our team's actions to diversify and grow Olympic Steel have made us a stronger, more resilient, and consistent performer while navigating the impacts of market cyclicality. So now with that, I will turn the call over to Andrew.