Olympic Steel, Inc.

2023 Second Quarter Financial Results 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. 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 second quarter of 2023. Our call this morning will be hosted by our Chief Executive Officer, Rick Mirabito, 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 release 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 will 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 second quarter results. I'll begin with an overview of another strong quarter for Olympic Steel. Then Andrew will review our segment performance and provide some comments on market conditions. Following that, Rich will discuss our financial results in more detail. And then, as always, we'll open up the call for your questions. Olympic Steel delivered another quarter of strong and steady performance as we continue to benefit from our diversification strategy and our investments in enhanced processing capabilities. We reported second quarter sales of $569 million with net income of $15 million and adjusted EBITDA of $31.2 million. These results are indicative of the success of our strategic actions. which strengthen our ability to deliver consistent profitability even in the face of market challenges. After benefiting from rising prices at the beginning of the year, this quarter we faced headwinds in carbon steel as hop rolled index pricing fell 24%. We also continue to navigate the industry-wide reduction in stainless steel shipments, while at the same time absorbing a 10% reduction in grade 304 surcharges. Despite these challenges, our adjusted EBITDA was up $2.6 million from the first quarter. Our second quarter results include the full earnings effect of MetalFab, which we acquired in January 2023. It was the second largest acquisition in our history. MetalFab was a strong contributor to our second quarter earnings, and we'll begin to see the benefit of Olympic supply synergies in the second half of 2023. In addition, several of our capital expansion projects came online during the quarter, and we continue to move equipment into our new fabrication facility in Bartlett, Illinois. We expect Bartlett will be fully operational by the end of the third quarter. Andrew will provide some additional details on our capital projects in his remarks. With a strong balance sheet and borrowing availability of more than $340 million, we continue to evaluate additional investments and actively seek acquisition opportunities that will further our strategy to expand into higher return, value-added products. We have a proven M&A track record, and we're confident in our ability to identify the right deals and execute seamless integrations to foster additional profitable growth for Olympic Steel and our stakeholders. While we continue to invest in our business, we are balancing these investments with our commitment to debt repayment and rewarding our shareholders. We reduced debt by $21 million during the second quarter, and we expect further reductions in the second half of the year. We also continue to pay our higher quarterly dividend rate of 12.5 cents per share. which allows our shareholders to directly benefit from our consistent performance and strong financial results. Now I'd like to take a moment to provide some color on how we are thinking about market conditions and our outlook for the rest of the year. While the near-term economic environment plays out, we do expect demand from our OEMs to remain steady in the third quarter, subject to normal seasonal trends. Longer term, We remain optimistic about the future of the domestic steel market. We expect that the solid outlook for manufacturers, increased government spending to support infrastructure and other projects, as well as bipartisan support for steel tariffs and quotas will continue to benefit domestic steel producers and metal service centers. In addition, our value-added processing capabilities put us in an excellent position to continue capitalizing on growing demand for fabrication as more customers look to outsource this work. I'm confident that regardless of what market environment we face, we have strategically positioned Olympic Steel to deliver more consistent results and higher returns than in the past. We are stronger than ever, and we will continue to execute on our strategy to further reduce the impact of market cyclicality on our business and deliver profitable growth. Now, I'll turn the call over to Andrew to provide more detail.