Olympic Steel, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Olympic Steel 2025 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, 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 call 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 2025. 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 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 today to discuss Olympic Steel's 2025 first quarter results. I'll begin with a summary of our first quarter earnings results, including our strong shipping start to the year, despite a challenging macro environment for the steel industry. Then, Andrew will review our segment performance, and following that, Rich will discuss our financial results in more detail. And then as always, we'll open up the call for your questions. So we've talked a lot in recent years about our strategy to build a stronger, more resilient Olympic steel, one that is positioned to deliver profitable results in any environment. Our first quarter performance during a challenging time for the metals industry reflects the success of these efforts and reinforces our strategy as we move forward. We reported strong shipments in first quarter sales of $493 million with net income of $2.5 million. All three of our business segments continued to deliver positive EBITDA. Our flat roll shipping volumes were up 24% sequentially and 6% over the prior year, hitting their highest levels since the third quarter of 2021. which was also the height of the post-COVID pricing and demand market. We really saw an increase in demand about halfway through the quarter as customers reacted to the announced 25% steel and aluminum tariffs and contemplated the impact of potential reciprocal tariffs. Andrew will talk more about this in a few moments. We continue to execute on our strategy to grow profitably, by diversifying into metal intensive end markets, expanding our fabrication capabilities, and focusing on a richer mix of higher margin metal products. Our commitment to M&A to bolster these areas has proven to be very effective. Our most recent acquisition, Metalworks, completed in late 2024, is off to an excellent start. As expected, it has been immediately accretive to our results. Building on our successful track record of completing eight acquisitions over the past seven years, we remain committed to M&A as an ongoing source of growth for Olympic Steel. We are also committed to making key organic growth investments in our operations that will enhance throughput and safety, and Andrew will detail more about that in a few minutes. At the same time, we've demonstrated our operational disciplines, by staying focused on what we can control. We are closely managing our working capital and improved our inventory turns as we weather uncertain markets. These efforts drove strong operating cash flow during the quarter, which resulted in a $37 million reduction in our debt. In addition, last week we announced the five-year extension of our $625 million asset-based revolving credit facility. This will continue to provide us with the flexible, low-cost capital to fund our continued growth, both organically and through acquisition. While tariffs have dominated the macroeconomic conversation, Olympic Steel is well-positioned to support increased manufacturing in the United States. Over 90% of our metal supply and almost all of our sales are domestically based, and our fabrication capabilities provide an excellent solution for OEMs looking to onshore, outsource, or simply expand their first stage of manufacturing in the United States. And our longstanding strong relationships with our domestic mills are also a real benefit in the current tariff environment. As we look ahead, we believe strongly in the Olympic steel that we have been building. We remain confident in our ability to continue to drive profitable growth regardless of market conditions. I'll now turn the call over to Andrew.