Albemarle Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the first quarter 2021 Albemarle Corporation Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press the star, then the one key on your touchtone telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you recall our persistence, please press star, then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker host. Meredith Bandy, Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you, Livia, and welcome to Albemarle's first quarter earnings conference call. Our earnings were released after the close of the market yesterday, and you'll find our press release, presentation, and non-GAAP reconciliations posted to our website under the Investors section at albemarle.com. Joining me on the call today are Kent Masters, Chief Executive Officer, Scott Tozier, Chief Financial Officer, and Rafael Crawford, President, Catalyst, Netha Johnson, President, Bromine Specialties, and Eric Norris, President, Lithium, are also available for Q&A. As a reminder, some of the statements made during this call, including our outlook, guidance, expected company performance, and proposed divestitures and expansion projects, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our press release and presentation. That same language applies to this call. Please also note that some of our comments today refer to financial measures that are not prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release and the appendix of our presentation, both of which are posted to our website. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Ken.

Okay. Thanks, Meredith. Good morning, and thanks to you all for joining us today. On today's call, I will highlight our recent accomplishments and discuss our strategy for as it relates to accelerating growth and creating a more sustainable business. Scott will give us more detail on our results, outlook, and capital allocation. This was another strong quarter for Albemarle with solid financial results. We generated net income of $96 million and adjusted EBITDA of $230 million, up 17% from last year. We benefited in part from several lithium customers that accelerated orders under long-term agreements, as well as favorable volume and customer mix in our bromine business. We continue to see strong market demand for lithium, especially from EVs. First quarter EV sales were up 135% versus last year, led by China. European and North American sales were also up significantly. All that said, remember that we are sold out in bromine and lithium. Therefore, we are maintaining our previously reported company guidance for the full year, Scott will provide additional detail on this in just a few minutes. We are advancing our growth plans with the progress being made at our Wave 2 lithium projects. These two projects, La Negra 3 and 4 and Kimerton 1 and 2, are expected to add volume beginning next year. As you are probably aware, during the first quarter, we successfully completed a $1.5 billion equity offering and then subsequently reduced our debt. This enabled us to achieve two strategic goals. First, we are now well-positioned to execute on our high-return Wave 3 growth projects for lithium and bromine. And second, we have maintained our investment-grade credit rating, which was recently upgraded to a BBB rating by S&P Global. I'm also proud to say that we have signed the UN Global Compact, joining the efforts of corporations and stakeholders worldwide to advance sustainability. On slide five, I want to update you on those two projects at La Negra and Kimberton, our two ongoing projects to increase lithium production from our world-class resources. These conversion facilities are in the final stages of construction and, when complete, are expected to double our nameplate capacity to 175,000 metric tons per year. This added capacity will provide much-needed volumes to support our customers' growth ambitions and will enhance our ability to drive further earnings expansion. Construction is on track for completion later this year. We are watching the Western Australia labor situation closely, but currently we do not expect any impact to our schedule. Once complete, we move into final commissioning and customer qualification, which typically takes about six months. We expect to begin producing commercial volume from both projects in 2022. These two sites will complete our Wave 2 lithium projects and enable our team to focus on the execution of Wave 3, which represents a further 150,000 metric tons of conversion capacity. We expect to make investment decisions on the first projects from Wave 3 as early as the middle of this year. This includes a greenfield site in China and potentially the acquisition of a Chinese conversion plant. I would like to mention that the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission, or CICHEN, has confirmed that our resource and reserves report is in full compliance following the additional data we provided in January. We are committed to complying with our regulatory obligations around the world, and we are pleased to reach a satisfactory and collaborative resolution with CCHEP. Finally, in bromine, we are accelerating our growth projects and expect to see the benefit of these projects beginning in 2022. I'll now turn the call over to Scott to review the first quarter results.