Albemarle Corporation

Hello, and welcome to Albemarle Corporation's Q1 2023 earnings call. All lines will remain muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand it over to Meredith Bandy, Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability. Ms. Bandy, please proceed.

All right. Thank you, Foram. And welcome everyone to album roles 1st, quarter 2023 earnings conference call our earnings were released after the close of market yesterday and you'll find the press release and earnings presentation posted to our website under the investors section at albemarle.com. Joining me on the call today are Kent masters chief executive officer and Scott Tozer chief financial officer. We also have Eric Norris, President of Energy Storage, Neffa Johnson, President of Specialties, and Raphael Crawford, President of Ketchum, available for Q&A. As a reminder, some of the statements made during the call, including our outlook, guidance, expected company performance, and timing of the expansion projects may constitute forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our press release and earnings presentation, which also applies to this call. Please also note that some of our comments today refer to non-GAAP financial measures, a reconciliation of which can be found in our earnings materials. And now I'll turn the call over to Kent.

Thank you, Meredith. Our first quarter was excellent, with net sales more than doubling versus first quarter last year and EBITDA up almost four times to $1.6 billion. This reflects the high market pricing for our energy storage business at the end of 2022. Our specialties business also had a strong quarter, up sequentially from last quarter on higher pricing. Looking forward to the rest of this year, we are adjusting our expectations based on the current lithium market pricing, and Scott will go into that in more detail. We moved the business forward in a number of ways during the quarter, including selecting the site for our U.S. Megaflex lithium processing facility in Richburg, South Carolina, which is a strategic move that is even more important given the US Inflation Reduction Act. We also announced the restructure of our Marble joint venture in Australia, and we announced a separate investment by Mineral Resources Limited into two of Albemarle's conversion assets in China. We expect those two deals to receive regulatory approval and close later this year. This week, we announced the final investment decision to build Kimmerton Trains 3 and 4 in Australia, which will be 100% Albemarle-owned. The fact that we are advancing the Kimmerton Trains and the U.S. Megaflex facility points to our confidence in the long-term growth and opportunities of the lithium business, and in particular, our energy storage segment. Lithium demand and the EV market continue to grow at extraordinary rates. And with that, I'll hand over to Scott.