Olympic Steel, Inc.

This time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference today, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Also, if you'd like to participate in our question and answer session today, please press star one from your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to withdraw your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd 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 fourth 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.

Thanks, Rich, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Olympic Steel's 2023 fourth quarter and full year results. I'll begin by talking about our 2023 performance and the strategic progress we've made over the last five years. Then Andrew will review our segment performance, and following that, Rich will discuss our financial results in more detail. And of course, then as always, we'll open up the call for your questions. It was another highly successful year for Olympic Steel. We believe our 2023 performance is a defining statement about our company's strength and resilience. For the second year in a row, we withstood a hot roll carbon steel index pricing decline of more than 45% during the year. as well as specialty metal surcharges that fell throughout the year. Yet, despite these significant pricing fluctuations, we delivered on our strategy and commitment to generate consistent, profitable results. We reported fourth quarter sales of $489 million with net income of $7.4 million and EBITDA of $20.9 million. All three of our business segments positively contributed to our results for both the fourth quarter and the full year. Our pipe and tube business delivered its second most profitable year ever. Our carbon business showed its resiliency in navigating the pricing pressures of 2023 with improvements in sales and gross margins. And although specialty metals faced industry-wide stainless steel headwinds, this segment contributed consistent, positive EBITDA. We are now five years into our strategy to build a more diversified company that delivers results and creates shareholder value even under challenging market conditions. During that time, we've successfully integrated six acquisitions, each of which has added a unique value-added offering to our portfolio. We were recently named Corporate Dealmaker of the Year by the Cleveland Association for Corporate Growth for a Metal Fab acquisition in January 2023. We have also strategically divested assets to further tighten our focus on higher return, higher value-add products. And throughout our transformation, we've stayed true to our operating disciplines. Our success is a result of all these actions. Our inventory management and strong cash flow have fortified our balance sheet and position Olympic Steel for future growth. In 2023, we invested $170 million in the highly accretive metal fab and central tube and bar acquisitions, and both investments have produced immediate, strong EBITDA returns. However, our total debt increased by only $25 million to $190 million at year end, with availability of approximately $339 million. As a result, we remain in excellent position to continue to invest in higher return opportunities in the future. The recent decision by our board of directors to increase our quarterly dividend by 20% also reflects our company's strong financial position and the success of our strategy. Cumulatively, we've raised our quarterly dividend from 2 cents per share to 15 cents per share since 2022, reinforcing our commitment to deliver value to our shareholders. Our total shareholder return for 2023 was just over 100%, and for the three-year post-COVID period, our return was over 400%. I'm proud of the entire Olympic Steel team their commitment to our strategy and the progress we've made the past five years and we continue to enhance our team with new hires and promotions in january 2024 we announced the promotion of zach siegel to the new role of president manufactured metal products zach has been with the company since 2007 and for the past six years he's played an instrumental role in our acquisition strategy in his new role Zach will lead our newly created manufactured metals products group, one of the growth areas of our company, while he remains involved in these mergers and acquisition activity. As we head into 2024, Olympic Steel is stronger than ever. We remain committed to our disciplines of managing working capital, operating expenses, cash flow, and debt, while we continue looking for opportunities to further expand our portfolio of higher return, higher value-add products through both organic growth and acquisitions. We're confident in our ability to build on our success in 2024, driving profitable growth and creating value for our shareholders. So now I'll turn the call over to Andrew.