Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation

Good day and welcome to the AMCO Pittsburgh Corporation second quarter 2019 earnings conference call. All participants will be in 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 touchtone phone to withdraw your question. Please press star and then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would like to now turn the conference over to Melanie Spousen, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communication. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jake, and good morning to everyone joining us on today's second quarter conference call. I'm joined 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 filings with 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 amcopgh.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett McBrayer, AMCO Pittsburgh CEO. Brett?

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning and welcome to our call. I'm excited to share the results of our second quarter performance. While we recorded a modest gap loss from continuing operations in quarter two, we are beginning to see the initial impact of our improvement efforts. These efforts have delivered an adjusted income from continuing operations, which is a non-gap measure of $2.5 million for the quarter and $3.8 million for the first six months of 2019. an improvement of more than 80% compared to last year's quarter and nearly double last year's adjusted performance on a year-to-date basis. During the second half of the year, we will continue to right-size our assets to deliver sustainable profitability in our businesses. We are on target to close on the sale of our Avonmore facility by around September 30th. We also anticipate the completion of our ASW divestiture by the end of the year. We expect a marked improvement in our earnings profile beginning as early as the fourth quarter of this year. Mike McCauley will review our financial results in more detail later in the call. Another area of importance that I would like to highlight is our performance from a safety, health, and environmental standpoint. Across the globe, we begin every operational daily management meeting focused on the well-being of our employees and the stability of our environmental systems. With the introduction of new leadership in 2019 and a focus on discipline daily execution, we have made some significant improvements. Our continuing operations have reduced recordable injuries globally by over 11% and lost time injuries by 17% compared to last year. We are far from where we want to be, but I'm encouraged by the progress our team has made. We also continue to operate our facilities incident-free from an environmental perspective. We will always strive to safeguard and enhance the well-being of the communities where we operate. These measures of success highlight our improved stability in people, processes, and equipment. I will now turn the call over to Sam Lyon, Unilever Steel President.