Olympic Steel, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Olympic Steel 2023 Third 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 third 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 release is 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 today to discuss Olympic Steel's 2023 third quarter results. I'll begin with an overview of the quarter, then Andrew will review our segment performance and provide additional insight on market conditions, and our latest acquisition. 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's performance in a challenging third quarter demonstrates the benefits of our actions to deliver more consistent results in all environments. All three of our segments were profitable. Led by our pipe and tube business, which recorded one of its most profitable quarters ever, and strong results from our carbon segment. We accomplished this while navigating several significant challenges during the quarter. Pressure on metal pricing continued with the declines accelerating in the back half of the quarter. These pressures were caused by added macroeconomic uncertainty, the UAW strike, and the threat of further interest rate hikes, leading to softer than anticipated volumes across the industry. Despite these headwinds, We reported third quarter sales of $526 million with net income of $12.2 million and EBITDA of $27.1 million. The integration of our metal fab business, which was acquired at the beginning of the year, continues, and we're excited about the impact this addition is having on our results. We are beginning to see benefits from our supply chain synergies, and expect full integration of the Metal Fab supply chain into our operations by the start of 2024. Since completing the acquisition of Metal Fab in January of this year, we have had strong cash flow and continue to reduce our debt, which Rich will detail later. Our strong balance sheet provides us with capital to pursue higher return investment opportunities, including additional attractive acquisitions. We capitalized on this with the acquisition of Central Tube and Bar, who we refer to as CTB, on October 2, 2023, and that marked our seventh acquisition in the past six years. CTB is exactly the type of company we want to acquire. CTB is well-run. It's a growing organization delivering high returns and consistent performance, and it's an excellent cultural fit. We believe their high-value contract manufacturing capabilities and geographic coverage in the South Central U.S. complement our offerings and expand our reach. We're excited to welcome the CTB team to the Olympic Steel family and look forward to their contributions to our pipe and tube segment. In addition to strategic investments, we continue to bolster the Olympic Steel team. In October, we welcome George Frost as our Director of National Sales, Aluminum. In this role, George will support the growth of Olympic Steel's specialty metals business segment with a focus on aluminum products and processing, a key element of our strategic growth plan. We also announced the promotion of Leah Kiley to the role of General Manager for Olympic Steel's Minneapolis Plate Processing Facility. Leah has been with Olympic since 2012 in different roles of growing responsibility, and she's been instrumental in the commercial success and continued growth of our Minnesota and Iowa operations. As we grow and invest in our business, we remain committed to rewarding our shareholders. We continue to pay our quarterly dividend rate of 12.5 cents per share, which allows our shareholders to directly benefit from our consistent financial performance. Before I turn the call over to Andrew, I would like to share a few thoughts on our outlook. As we close out another solid year, we remain optimistic about the long-term outlook for the U.S. steel market and our business. We are seeing a rebound in pricing along with continued industrial backlogs, OEM outsourcing of fabrication work, and anticipated infrastructure spending. These dynamics, together with our ongoing efforts to invest in higher return opportunities, will enable us to drive additional profitable growth in 2024, including the active pursuit of acquisitions. I have full confidence that Olympic Steel is strategically positioned to deliver consistently improving results and stronger profitability regardless of the market's challenges. Andrew?