Albemarle Corporation

Hello and welcome to Albemarle Corporation's Q1 2025 earnings call. I will now hand it over to Meredith Bandy, Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability.

Thank you and welcome everyone to Albemarle's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Our earnings were released after market closed 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 Neil Sherry, Chief Financial Officer. Netha Johnson, Chief Operations Officer, and Eric Norris, Chief Commercial Officer, 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 strategic initiatives, may constitute forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our press release and earnings presentation. That also applies to our call. Please also note that some of our comments today refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations can be found in the earnings materials. And now I'll turn the call over to Kent.

Thank you, Meredith. For the first quarter, we reported net sales of $1.1 billion, including increased specialties volumes and record lithium production from our integrated lithium conversion network. Adjusted EBITDA was $267 million. reflecting strong year-over-year improvements in specialties and catching. We generated $545 million in cash from operations, achieving an operating cash conversion rate exceeding 200%. We are maintaining our 2025 outlook considerations based on recently observed lithium market prices. These considerations include the anticipated direct impact of tariffs announced to date, Note that the direct impact of tariffs is expected to be minimal as Albemarle benefits from global diversification and current exemptions, particularly for critical minerals such as lithium salts and spodumene. Neil will provide more details on this later in the call. Regardless of shifts in the external market environment, Albemarle remains focused on controllable factors to ensure competitiveness through the cycle. To that end, we continue to act decisively across four key areas. Optimizing our conversion network, improving cost and productivity, reducing capital expenditure, and enhancing financial flexibility. For example, through April, we achieved approximately 90% run rate against the midpoint of our $350 million cost and productivity improvement target. and our team has identified opportunities to reach the high end of the 300 to $400 million range. This includes incremental volume improvements as we ramp our new facilities and cost savings from placing our Chengdu site on care and maintenance. This quarter, we are also providing updated forecasts for global lithium market demand and supply. We anticipate global lithium demand growth in the 15 to 40% range in 2025. depending on tariff impacts, policy changes, and macroeconomic trends. Longer term, we expect the lithium demand outlook to remain robust, more than doubling from 2024 to 2030, driven by the energy transition and global demand for electric vehicles and grid storage. Incentivizing supply growth requires long-term lithium pricing well above current spot prices. Now I'll turn it over to Neil, who will provide more details on our financial performance and outlook considerations. I will conclude our prepared remarks with further details on our lithium market forecast before opening the call for Q&A.