Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation

Good day, and welcome to the Amco Pittsburgh Corporation first quarter 2019 earnings results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would like to now turn the conference over to Melanie Sproulson. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alyssa, and good morning to everyone joining us on today's first quarter conference call. I'm joined today by Brett McBrayer, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike McCauley, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Also joining us on the call today are Sam Lyon, President of Union Electric Steel Corporation, and Terry Kenney, President of Air and Liquid Systems Corporation. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that participants on this call may make statements or comments that are forward-looking and may include financial projections or other statements of the corporation's plans, objectives, expectations, or intentions. These matters involve certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of the corporation's control. The corporation's actual results may differ significantly from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statement due to a variety of factors. including those discussed in the corporation's most recently filed Form 10-K and subsequent filing through the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any obligation to update or otherwise release publicly any revision to our forward-looking statements. A replay of this call will be posted on our website later today and remain available for two weeks following the conclusion of the call. To access the earnings release or the webcast replay, please consult the Investors section of our website at ampopgh.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett McBrayer, AMCO Pittsburgh CEO. Brett?

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning. Welcome to our call. As Melanie mentioned, with us today are Sam Lyon and Terry Kinney. Sam joined AMCO Pittsburgh as Union Electric Steel Corporation president in February this year, and he runs our forged and capped engineered product segment. He brings over 18 years of experience in lean manufacturing, operations, and process improvement leadership to the organization. and we're pleased to have him as part of the AMCO Pittsburgh leadership team. Sam and his team have been instrumental in driving the improvements we're beginning to see in our UES business. Terry has been with AMCO Pittsburgh for 35 years. Terry has held his current position as president of Air and Liquid Systems Corporation for 10 years. His knowledge and leadership are invaluable in the execution of our strategic plan. Terry has challenged his business leaders and is engaged with his team to further improve the profitability of this group. This morning we issued our earnings press release for AMCO Pittsburgh's first quarter of 2019. There are a couple of key items I'd like to speak to first and foremost. We announced today our plan to sell our U.S. Castrol manufacturing facility located in Evanmore, Pennsylvania to an affiliate of WIMCO Incorporated. We expect the transition will close in the second half of this year once remaining customer commitments have been fulfilled. Excess capacity and high operating costs in our cash flow system have made operation of the Admore facility untenable. The annualized impact on operating results following the sale is currently expected to improve income from continuing operations by approximately $9 to $10 million. Also during the quarter, we implemented a first phase reduction in force. These actions are key steps in the corporation's continued overall restructuring, helping to further reduce our overhead costs and right-size our business to meet current and future customer demand. We expect both actions to improve our operating results from continuing operations by approximately $1 million per month on a full run rate basis once the sale is complete. We are beginning to see the benefits of our operational improvement initiatives and are currently engaged in additional asset restructuring opportunities, which should facilitate further overhead reduction actions and increase efficiencies in our business. Mike McCauley will review our financial results in more detail later in the call. I will now turn the call over to Sam Lyon, who will discuss the forged and cast engineered product segment activities for the first quarter. Sam? Thanks, Brad.