Albemarle Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q3 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 star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Burke, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Albemarle's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Our earnings were released after close of market yesterday, and you'll find our press release earnings presentation and non-gap reconciliations posted on our website under the investor section at www.albemarle.com. Joining me on the call today are Kent Masters, our Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Tozier, our Chief Financial Officer. Raphael Crawford, President of Catalyst, Natha Johnson, President of Bromine Specialties, and Eric Norris, President of 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 timing of expansion projects, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities law. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our press release and earnings presentation. The same language applies to this call. Please also note that some of our comments today refer to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release and the appendix of our earnings presentation, both of which are posted on our website. Now I will turn the call over to Kent.

Thanks, David, and thank you all for joining us today. On today's call, I will highlight our quarterly results, provide an update on our goals for 2021, and discuss the progress of our ongoing expansion plans. Scott will provide more detail on our results, outlook, and guidance. We reported another solid quarter with net sales of $831 million and adjusted EBITDA of $218 million. Sales improved by 11 percent on a year-over-year basis while adjusted EBITDA was relatively flat compared to the third quarter last year. Excluding FCS from our third quarter 2020 results, our net sales were 19% higher and EBITDA was up 14%. Scott will get into more detail on our financials in a few minutes, including favorable revisions to our guidance. As we stated in our earnings release this morning, we increased our guidance based on the third quarter results. During our recent Investor Day, we did a deep dive into our accelerated growth strategy and provided color on how we think about the near-term expansion of our lithium business, as well as our disciplined investment approach. Since that event in early September, we are pleased to have announced several updates on those efforts. This includes signing an agreement to acquire Gongji Tianyang New Energy Materials, or Tianyang, which owns a recently built conversion plant near Qianzhou. We are tolling to ensure the plant operates as advertised and expect to close this transaction in the first quarter of next year. This puts us on track for first sales from this plant in the first half of next year. In addition to this plant, we have signed two recent agreements for investments in China to support two greenfield projects. each initially targeting 50,000 metric tons per year. These projects position us for initial added conversion capacity of up to 150,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide on an annual basis to meet our customers' growing demands. In addition, our marble joint venture announced the restart of the Wajina lithium mine in Western Australia. On slide five, you will see the objectives we set for 2021. When we set these goals, we did so with the intent of challenging ourselves with plans that were aggressive but achievable. As we approach the end of the year, I'm excited by the significant progress and proud of the effort our team has put into achieving these goals. As you see on this slide, we have accomplished a vast majority of what we set out to do. For example, we are successfully progressing high return, fast payback roaming projects at both Magnolia and JBC. These projects will increase our capacity and improve the efficiencies of our operations. We've also made significant progress on our lithium growth projects. Now let's turn to slide six. First, at La Negra 3 and 4, our team continues to execute the plan. I'm excited to announce that we recently completed a major milestone by achieving first first lithium carbonate production in late October. Initial production volumes will be used to qualify the plant and the material with our customers to ensure we are meeting their requirements. This qualification process is proceeding on track with first sales expected in the first half of next year. In Western Australia, the ongoing labor shortages and pandemic-related travel restrictions have continued to significantly impact virtually all companies in that region, and show no signs of easing in the near term. Despite these efforts, and with Herculean efforts, our team has managed to hold Kimmerton 1 construction completion to year-end 2021. We now expect Kimmerton 2 construction completion in the second half of 2022. While we are facing challenges at these projects, our strategy to consolidate resources and prioritize the first train continues to mitigate additional risks. On slide seven, I'll highlight the progress we've made on our wave three program since we last spoke to you at our investor day. At the end of September, we announced an agreement to acquire Kenyon for $200 million, including a recently built conversion plant near the port of Chinzo designed to produce up to 25,000 metric tons of lithium per year, with the potential to expand to 50,000 metric tons per year. We expect this acquisition to follow a similar path as our acquisitions of Xinyu and Chengdu facilities back in 2016. Following the close of the transaction, which is expected in the first quarter of next year, We plan to make additional investments to bring Chinzo plant to Albemarle standards and ramp to initial production of 25,000 metric tons. This acquisition enables us to accelerate conversion capacity growth and leverage our world-class resource base. Together with our partner, we agreed to restart operations at the Wajana lithium mine in Western Australia. Initially, Wajina will begin one of three processing lines, each of which can produce up to 250,000 metric tons of lithium spodumene concentrate. This resource will be critical as we ramp our conversion capacity in Western Australia with our Kimerton sites. We also signed agreements to invest in two greenfield conversion sites in China at Zhongzhigang and Meishan. We plan to build identical conversion plants with initial target production of 50,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium hydroxide at each site. These investments offer additional optionality for future growth and have expansion potential. Investing in China offers capital-efficient, high-return growth with proximity to our low-cost Australian spodumene resources and many of our major cathode and battery customers. We continue to explore global expansion of our conversion capacity as the battery supply chain shifts west. Turning to slide eight for a view of our global project pipeline. As you can see, Albemarle is executing a robust pipeline of projects all around the world. For example, our bromine business is pursuing incremental expansions in Jordan and the United States. These high-return projects leverage our low-cost resources and technical know-how to support customers in growing and diverse markets like electronics, telecom, and automotive. In Chile, the Solar Yield Improvement Project allows us to increase lithium production without increasing our brine pumping rates, utilizing a proprietary technology to improve efficiency and sustainability. In Australia, we continue to progress study work on additional Kimmerton expansions to leverage greater scale and efficiency with repeatable designs. Finally, in the United States, we are expanding our Silver Peak facility in Nevada to double lithium carbonate production. This is the first of several options to expand local U.S. production. In Kings Mountain, North Carolina, we continue to evaluate restarting our mines. And at our bromine facility in Magnolia, Arkansas, we're evaluating the process technologies to leverage our brines to extract lithium. We'll continue to update you periodically on our pipeline. I hope this gives you a sense of the diversity and optionality Albemarle has as a global lithium producer. I'll now turn the call over to Scott for a look at the financials.