Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation

Good day and welcome to the AMCO Pittsburgh Corporation first quarter 2020 earnings results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. If 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. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Melanie Strawson, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning to everyone joining us on today's first quarter 2020 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 Lyons, President of Union Electric Steel Corporation, and Terry Tenney, 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 statement. 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.

Thank you, Melanie. Good morning and welcome to our call. One of the core values of our business is to protect the safety and health of our employees and to ensure that we protect the environment and the communities where we operate. Our environmental record continues to be outstanding as we maintain our incident-free trend through 2019 and into the first quarter of this year. Additionally, our lost time rate and our recordable injury rate improved in the quarter, decreasing by 15% and 40% respectively. I'm excited about the actions we are taking to further improve our performance and the dedication of our employees to help us create an injury-free workplace. Our business and that of our customers are considered essential for the guidelines established by the Department of Homeland Security. We continue to follow the requirements and practices outlined by government, state, and local officials where we operate around the globe protect our employees, their families, and our vendors and customers. We are grateful but not surprised by the engagement of our employees to work safely during these unusual and challenging circumstances. As I've noted in previous calls, we've taken many actions to improve the profitability of Amco Pittsburgh, including divestitures, efficiency improvements, and cost reductions across all areas of our business. These efforts returned our business to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2019. With many actions still in progress, we further improved on our performance in the first quarter of this year, recently announcing an earnings per share of 33 cents and an improvement in operating income of 43% from quarter four of 2019 to quarter one this year, excluding unusual items our adjusted operating income from continuing operations improved by 85% sequentially. Mike McCauley, our CFO, will share more details regarding our results later in the call. I'd now like Terry Kinney, president of Air and Liquid Systems, and Sam Lyon, president of Union Electric Steel, to share the improvements in their group's performance. Terry?